


Family Ties

by laniew1



Series: Project Orion [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-03-02 06:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 43,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18805792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1
Summary: Setting up a home base in Roswell is supposed to make things in Alex’s life easier; or it would be if he didn’t have Jim Valenti trying to right wrongs from beyond the grave.





	1. Chapter 1

**Family Ties 1/?**

 

Setting down roots at Cannon is easier then Alex thought it would be.

Mostly because he thinks the General has been holding his support staff in reserve just waiting for Alex to actually choose a base at which to do so.

He gets an admin and data clerks and a couple of additional airman to add to his group of six newbies within days of him being released from the clutches of Medical and them officially moving everything to their new building.

It’s all highly suspect, but he also doesn’t have the energy to deal with it. Not when Michael is hovering, Liz and Maria are hovering, _everyone_ is fucking hovering and he hates it.

Dealing with all of them makes going into his office at Cannon a huge relief because not one of them has realized that being in an actual office on the actual base means that they could _actually_ visit him if they so choose, so long as he’d already had passes issued at the gate and arranged for an escort.

He’s not going to enlighten them until he’s had a chance to breathe, though he’s kind of looking forward to maybe being able to have Michael visit him for lunch periodically.

“Sir we need to talk about that box of documents that Doctor Valenti gave you,” Sullivan taps on his door, laptop under his arm.

Alex signals him in and jerks his head towards the table set to the side of his office. It’s nice to have space to spread out that isn’t his desk or balancing laptops on knees.

Sullivan has scanned all the documents that Kyle had gotten from his mom and he wasn’t wrong, they’re definitely written in code.

Though they’re written in code using Antarian which Alex finds just plain weird, because he knew Jim Valenti.

Jim Valenti wasn’t Antarian, had probably only been involved in whatever cursory way his father needed him to be involved and not demand more control then his father would have wanted to give.

“I’ve run a few of the documents through our regular lock key programs, nothing is flagging. I have the cross reference that Nasy gave us for the English to Antarian and vice versa but…”

“We need the actual key to unlock it,” Alex finishes. “These were left for Kyle by his dad, which means that likely the key code is going to be something that was personal between the two of them.”

“You grew up with Doctor Valenti maybe you could…?”

“Kyle and I weren’t friends past like 13,” Alex shrugs, there’s still that sting that Kyle figured out Alex was gay and decided they couldn’t be friends anymore. It’s been a lot of years since they were those kids, but it still hurts sometimes to think of all that missed time. “I can call him though and see if he has any ideas.”

 

********************************

 

Kyle insists they need to talk in person about his dad which Alex is pretty sure means that Kyle wants to make sure that he hasn’t popped stitches or developed a spontaneous brain hemorrhage.

How he could determine any of that by sitting across a desk from him Alex isn’t sure, but he’s also pretty confident that Kyle could figure out a way.

He grudgingly tells Kyle to check for his pass at the gate, arranges for Perkins to pick him up and transport him and waves goodbye to his days of privacy and quiet because he’s sure Kyle will tell every single person they know where he’s going.

“This is much less super-secret military installation then your last place,” Kyle comments when he’s led into Alex’s office by a very bemused Perkins.

“That’s because all the super-secret military stuff is now safely behind triple locked doors and guarded by attack robots now,” Alex says and just raises an eyebrow at him when Kyle stops dead in his tracks.

“I can’t tell if you’re serious or not,” he complains.

“I guess you could get kidnapped again and try?” Alex just smiles enigmatically at him and waves Kyle over to the table where he’d had Sullivan leave his laptop.

“I’ll take a hard pass,” Kyle mutters as he sits down in one of the chairs.

“So what’s up?” Kyle glances at the screen and there’s absolutely no recognition on his face so Alex knows he’s not learned Antarian in the ten years since they were in school.

“We’ve been going through the stuff your dad left,” Alex says as he settles in behind the laptop. It’s angled so they both can see it. “Quite a bit of it’s in code so we need a key to break it, it’s your dads stuff and he left it for you…”

“He didn’t leave it for me, my mom collected it all in a box and packed it away,” Kyle interrupts. “She thought he was having an affair and then he died…”

Alex ignores the idea that Jim Valenti was having an affair, it doesn’t match anything he knew about the man who tried to intercede on his behalf with his dad for a long time before he realized he was never going to be able to _make_ Jesse Manes be an actual father instead of a monster.

Family was everything to Jim.

“Well I’m pretty sure he didn’t leave it for your mom, he probably figured it would end up in your hands somehow, some way.”

Kyle looks at the screen, really looks at it and there’s still no sign of any recognition.

“That looks like…”

“It’s Antarian,” Alex says.

Kyle snorts, “my dad spoke English and Spanish interchangeably at times, but I’m fairly confident that he didn’t speak alien.”

“Antarian is mostly a written language anymore, there’s very few of the actual survivors from the mass exodus in 1947 that are still alive, and their children and grandchildren were raised speaking the languages of whatever countries they chose to settle in.”

“How would my dad even…” Kyle just shakes his head.

“I’m sure he had help, probably alien help if some of what we’re seeing is any indication. And I’m pretty sure that if we can figure out the key it’ll translate everything to English. Likely he did a lot of this as a security precaution to keep my dad from being able to figure out what he had hidden away or what he was _hiding_ away for someone higher up to find and use to take him down.”

“Which you didn’t even know about, and still managed to do,” Kyle says. “So why are you even worried about what my dad might have buried in there?”

“Because I’m curious by nature, and I have a feeling that there was a lot of stuff that was eyes only that my dad didn’t keep in digital or paper form just so it couldn’t be found that way; and I’m kind of hoping that maybe _your_ dad did.”

Kyle sighs, rubs a hand over his face like he’s exhausted, it draws Alex’s focus directly to him and he quickly notices the bags under his eyes, the faint paleness of his skin…

“Are you not sleeping? We have therapists that…”

“Max is being a dick,” Kyle says tiredly. “Nothing a therapist is going to resolve.”

Alex sits for a moment, “You guys seemed fine at dinner?” And they had been, chatting around Liz like they were friends. Max had even given Canvers Kyle’s name when he’d given him Liz’s for the background checks.

“Yeah that was before we managed to get kidnapped out of his home, now he’s all ‘I can’t protect anyone’ and ‘this is all my fault, we should have split up’ and,” Kyle sighs again. “Liz is working on him because she’s got the time and _probably_ won’t actually shoot him, and I just can’t take time off work to convince someone that I’m a grown ass man that doesn’t _need_ protecting.”

Alex would laugh but he doesn’t think that’s an appropriate response. He thinks he should probably ask if Kyle is dating Liz or Max or both of them, but honestly, he doesn’t _really_ want to know.

“So you think the key you’re looking for would be something only my dad and I would know,” Kyle says, he leans forward like looking closer at the alien symbols will help trigger a memory.

“Yeah, like a nickname or a special place that you guys would go or…”

“Well the special place would have been the cabin and that doesn’t have a quippy name,” Kyle laughs softly, “but… he used to call me magoo.”

“Magoo? Like Mr. Magoo?” Alex says slowly, trying to breathe through the need to laugh because how the hell had he not known that?

Kyle rolls his eyes at him, “you don’t get to use that against me.”

“I would never,” Alex says, even as he’s mentally trying to figure out where and when to pull it out. Because that’s priceless.

He taps in magoo though, and it takes a few seconds for the screen to unlock and ‘Hi Magoo, I love you’ to tick out.

“Huh,” Kyle says, his fingers hover over the screen as the words fade away and the alien symbols start changing into numbers. “Look at that.”

 

********************************

 

Now that they’re settled in at Cannon and they’re not worried about them being compromised everyone gets to drive themselves to wherever they’re staying.

Barracks on base for most of them at least for the short term while they all apartment and house hunt.

But that also means he gets to drive himself home, pulling in next to Michael’s truck always makes him smile.

The fact that it’s home now, and Michael is there and calls it his home as well. That when he walks through the front door Michael will already be in the process of putting something together for dinner, or already have dinner ready depending on how late Alex is.

“You showed Valenti your new place before me?” Michael frowns at him as he closes the door behind him. Alex raises a brow at him as he sets his bag down. Michael’s frown deepens as he realizes that Alex is using the crutch today.

“What happened?” he sets the potholders down and is front of Alex patting him down for injuries before Alex even blinks.

“Nothing? My leg was bugging me, so I’ll use the crutch for a day or so. Probably just overexertion from getting the offices set up,” Alex cups Michael’s face with his free hand and leans forward for a kiss that Michael readily returns.

He pulls Alex flush up against him and Alex can feel his lips curved into a smile as Michael drags them across his cheek and holds Alex tight.

Alex relaxes, Captain Manes flittering off to the couch while Alex rests his head in the curve of Michael’s neck and breathes.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of this, of having Michael warm against him, touching him like he’s precious to him.

“You know it’s not a competition, right?” Alex murmurs.

Kyle is his friend, as much as Maria and Liz were his best friends in high school, _Kyle_ was his best friend from before they were old enough to talk. When they were infants being placed in the same playpen while their mothers chatted about gods know what and their fathers did things they’re now in the process of undoing.

“But it’s Valenti,” Michael says, Alex doesn’t need to see his face to know he’s scowling and he’d laugh but he knows that Michael is thinking about all the shit he dealt with in school from Kyle and his friends.

Kyle is a better person now, which if you’d asked him ten years ago he would have said it wasn’t possible.

But Kyle is trying which means Alex is trying.

“He’s not the same person he was back then,” Alex says, he draws back so he can look into Michael’s eyes and he presses a kiss to the downward tilt of his lips because he can and because he knows that Michael will smile at him.

“I know that,” Michael mutters. “It’s just Kyle and he got to see your new space before I did, we didn’t even get to christen it or anything.”

Alex laughs and rolls his eyes, “you know that there’s not a chance in hell we will ever have sex in my office in the military space on base, right?”

“We could have,” Michael pouts and Alex shakes his head at him.

“If it’s that important to you I can set up a makeshift office here and let you bend me over the desk…”

“I’d rather just take you to our bed, it’s probably more comfortable.”

“How about you feed me first and then we can discuss the logistics.”

 

********************************


	2. Chapter 2

**Family Ties 2/?**

 

There’s a moment when he first wakes up that he just lays there. Listens to Michael breathe beside him, warm and safe, listens to the quiet of the cabin and the outside world.

It amazes him every day that he gets to have this, that he gets to roll over and touch Michael’s arm and that he’ll wake and pull Alex close to him. That Alex will get to throw a leg over Michael’s and burrow that much closer.

That they’ll get to exchange sleepy morning kisses and Michael will roll him onto his back and touch him like he’s the most precious thing he has.

If they have time, sometimes they’ll make love, but usually it’s grinding together, Alex wrapping a hand around them while Michael braces himself on shaking arms over him.

It almost always results in them taking a shower together because Michael is all about the water conservation and Alex is all about having Michael as close to him as possible for as long as possible.

Likely for Michael it’s the same thing as well, though he always get the smirk and wink and ‘to conserve water, you know.’

 

********************************

 

During the week they always eat breakfast together, but it’s a rushed affair because even with no one physically picking him up at the cabin Alex still likes to be one of the first ones at work. Though Canvers will typically beat him by minutes just because of his sheer proximity to the base.

He likes their breakfasts on the weekends together better, when they can curl up on the porch in sweatpants with their cups of coffee and just _be_ together.

There’s still two more mornings of rushed breakfasts and quick kisses by the door before Alex gets to curl up with Michael on the porch though.

Those two days are going to be filled with the ongoing process of going through Jim Valenti’s notes now that they’re all scanned and decoded as well as the digital files they’re dragging off the computers confiscated from his dad’s bunker.

The information they’re getting from Jim’s notes are fascinating and Alex kind of wishes Nasy had an actual time machine hidden in the desert because the stuff that Jim had written down…

It’s not _all_ bad, but there’s a lot of it that is. Some of it makes him wonder if his father shouldn’t be in actual prison instead of just in the process of being dishonorably discharged.

Because if the things that Alex is finding in Jim’s notes and on those computers are in any way true… he knows his father is a monster, he’s _his_ monster but the experiments that Jim describes witnessing on aliens that his father has been party in holding prisoner make his stomach turn and he’s seen some crazy, _awful_ shit.

 

********************************

 

“There’s a facility,” Alex starts, he’s got Canvers and Barrows in his office, door closed, blinds drawn. “Jim Valenti called it the Caulfield facility, I don’t find a facility on any maps, but I do have coordinates for it.”

“So it’ll be a surprise for all of us,” Canvers grins then he looks over at Barrow, they stare at each other having a silent conversation that Alex knows from dealing with them is actually a silent battle for which one of them gets to call dibs.

He doesn’t remember whose turn it actually is. He thinks Barrows had point on the last field op which means it should be Canvers turn.

“Who do you want with you?” Alex asks, he taps a pen against the side of the table and then writes Nasy and Perkins down, adds Sullivan because he’ll need a computer guy since Alex won’t be there, it’ll be a tossup between Whithers and Daniels and he’ll choose one of the new kids because they need some field experience.

“Nasy, Perkins and Sullivan… Whithers and Carmichael,” Canvers taps off on his fingers, “we’ll need the bigger vehicle…”

“Weapons too,” Barrows says, he taps a couple of keys on his laptop. “Since we don’t know what you’ll really be wandering into.”

“Just don’t shoot anyone, or blow anything up,” Alex says. As far as the General is concerned Alex getting shot has them at quota for how many injuries they can incur or inflict, and they’re 13 days shy of a year without something blowing up on them. If they go the whole year Alex thinks they get a free lunch out of it.

 

********************************

 

Canvers packs his team into two cars and hits the road just shy of 1000. Alex knows they’ll stop for food on the way and should be wherever Caulfield is actually located no later than 1500.

 _Will be late, waiting for Canvers to check in_ he texts to Michael shortly after they leave.

_Ok, something going on?_

_Don’t know yet_

Alex leaves it at that, because he really _doesn’t_ know what secrets Caulfield holds.

And the things it did hold, the stuff that Jim wrote and hid away… those are things he doesn’t want Michael knowing, doesn’t want Max or Isobel to know about.

They’re the things they feared would happen to them if they were found out and he shudders to think of the atrocities that _could_ have happened to them if his father’s twisted version of Project Shepherd had actually found them before Alex had.

“Sir, you’re supposed to meet Ms. Ortecho and Ms. DeLuca for lunch,” his new actual admin, an innocent A1C named Tulliver taps on his door. He glances at his watch and he will have to go slightly over the speed limit to make it to lunch on time.

 

 

********************************

 

Liz and Maria are already settled into a booth at the Crashdown when he gets there.

“I already ordered for you,” Liz grins at him as he slides into the booth beside her.

“Sorry, got distracted,” Alex says as he pushes his beanie into the pocket on his leg and rolls his shoulders, he’s got a knot right between his shoulder blades that’s been bugging him.

“Anything interesting?” Maria asks, smirking over at him from where she’s half reclining on her side of the booth.

“Nothing I can share.”

Maria rolls her eyes at him and Liz who must have been subjected to some Classified work in Denver just shrugs like it’s nothing.

“Isobel wants to throw a housewarming party for you and Michael,” Liz says, she’s twisting her straw wrapper around her fingers and not making eye contact. He makes another mental note to find out what the hell is up with her and whatever her issue is with Michael, Max and Isobel.

As well as try and pin down _what_ the actual relationship between her, Kyle and Max is.

He keeps getting distracted; and she’s still _talking_ to them and Kyle is letting her handle the Max situation, so whatever it is can’t be too horrible he supposes.

“I’ve lived in the cabin for almost six months, Michael has lived there for two months now; not that he actually _asked_ to move in or anything, just showed up, took over a drawer and never left…” he shakes his head and rolls his eyes, “Anyway, so _why_ do we need a party?”

“Isobel wants to throw a party that will have all of us and all of your guys in attendance, so everyone can mingle and meet,” Maria says, sitting up straight in the booth and leaning forward to take Alex’s hands in hers. “Because they kind of saved our asses and she wants to make sure they know how grateful she is.”

“She doesn’t need to throw a party for that,” Alex says, “I can just invite everyone over for a barbecue or something, Michael can do amazing stuff on the grill.”

Maria grins at him. “We’re quite aware, Max had him cooking for us and let me tell you my thighs and ass are unbelievably happy that our group sleepover didn’t last longer than half a day because…” she shakes her head. “Who knew Guerin had hidden skills like that in the kitchen, he certainly doesn’t broadcast those.”

 

********************************

 

The afternoon is quiet, Nasy left a list of tests and diagnostics for their remaining new airman to run on some of the simpler tech they’ve got.

It’s how he trains when he’s not there to slap hands away from buttons that are threatening to blow off someone’s arm or disintegrate half a wall.

Alex uses the quiet time that Nasy being gone with Canvers affords him to continue digging through Jim’s stuff, but then he notices that Sullivan had managed to pull all of the electronic data from his dad’s computers and got it uploaded to their servers at some point so he begins filtering through that as well.

His dads’ computer security is laughable, and he _would_ laugh but it’s actually kind of terrifying to think his dad had all this data out there, on computers connected via Wi-Fi to the internet and somehow through some miracle of god or alien origin managed to _not_ get fucking hacked.

Once his blood pressure comes down, he thinks he’ll make it an exercise at some point to have his computer boys and girls tell him how the security could have been better, then do it. They’ll get bonus points if they can manage to keep Sullivan or himself out for more than ten minutes.

The General says he needs to afford them more learning opportunities. This seems like a perfect one.

Among all the data that somehow did not manage to get leaked all over the world wide web there’s documents that his dad should never have had access to and a half a dozen video files that Sullivan has already flagged as sensitive which could mean any number of things but realistically means that Alex shouldn’t watch them by himself as they likely contain triggers of some sort.

He’s contemplating calling Barrows in to watch at least one or two of the video files just to see what they’re dealing with when his phone rings.

It startles him for a moment because no one calls him at work, everyone texts or calls him on his office phone.

He pushes himself to his feet as soon as he sees Canvers name flashing on the screen.

“What’s happened?”

Canvers is silent on the other end of the phone for long enough that Alex starts leaving his office to track down Barrows.

It’s just slightly after 1500, they either didn’t stop for lunch or Canvers made them eat in the vehicle on their way. And he can’t hear any explosions or gunfire, so it can’t be _that_ bad. But that leaves a whole lot of other avenues that could have fucked them over.

“So, Sullivan says we need you here,” Canvers says, he says it in a slow steady voice that means that he’s about half a second away from beating someone’s head in.

“I’m not cleared for field duty,” Alex reminds him, he doesn’t _need_ to remind him because Canvers gets copies of all of his medical records and while the General and medical have signed off on him being behind a desk monitoring operations, they have _not_ cleared him for going out into the field.

“Yep, I’m firmly aware, but I have Sullivan telling me he needs you here and…” Canvers takes a breath, he’s rattled. Alex can count the number of times he’s heard Canvers rattled and it begins and ends with him bleeding out in a desert and ultimately losing his leg.

“It’s a four-hour drive if we don’t stop for food,” Alex says, he finds Barrows already on his phone tapping away at computers. Likely recalling those lucky people who thought they had today and tomorrow off but now will be confined to base until they deal with whatever shitstorm just erupted.

“Do you think the General would let us borrow a helicopter?” Canvers asks.

Alex snorts, “I think if I tell the General I need to requisition a helicopter _you_ better have already called him and explained why you feel it necessary to have me take a helicopter when I’m supposed to be firmly stationed behind a desk not overexerting myself.”

“I’ll do it,” Canvers says, “Just give me ten minutes and…”

“Jesus, how bad is it?” Alex asks and he hadn’t really been alarmed at what they could have found at Caulfield until Canvers volunteered to call the General personally.

“I…” he can hear Canvers breathing on the other side, choosing his words carefully and likely walking away from anyone he’d happened to be near. “I can’t even begin to fully explain how big of a shit show we just walked into. I’m doing my best to keep everyone calm but Nasy is about ready to flip his lid and the guys are super pissed… And I think this one prick here might be related to you since he keeps tossing Sergeant Manes around like it means something.”

“Alright, give us ten and we’ll be on our way, it’s still going to take some time to get to you,” Alex warns.

“I think our guys will calm down when they know you’re on your way but I’m going to have to secure the guys here that are _not_ ours in a secure room not guarded by Perkins because I think she might just line them up and shoot them all in the fucking balls if I don’t.”

“That bad,” Alex says.

“Whatever your worst-case scenario for what we might walk into? Triple that and you might come close.”

“Jesus, tell Nasy to breathe, tell Perkins not to shoot anyone and…” Barrows flashes him a thumbs up which could mean any number of things at this point. “Just tell them we’re on our way.”

 

********************************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So things to note going forward: I adore Noah and I love his relationship with Isobel, therefore, because I'm the writer of this particular AU story and can do what I want he is NOT going to be an alien that has been using Isobel for 10 years or so. I just, no...
> 
> Also, buckle up. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Family Ties 3/?**

 

He hasn’t been in a helicopter since a very stressful two weeks in Afghanistan. He didn’t enjoy the rides then, too many worries of surface to air missile attacks and the fact that they were so exposed at every minute of the trip had the adrenaline levels way too high to sit back and just enjoy the view.

He enjoys this one much more. It’s New Mexico so the surface to air missile attack probability is on the low end of the scale.

McDonald and Farrell make it in before they leave for the helicopter pad, so that gives him three more bodies to throw at Canvers to hopefully keep and maintain control of whatever situation they’re falling face first into.

When they get to the Caulfield site he can see no other vehicles save for theirs, that means if there’s people on site they’ve got an underground parking structure being utilized or a secondary location they’re being trucked in from.

Canvers must have been waiting for them as Alex sees him coming out of the building with Sullivan on his heels, no Nasy which is worrisome.

“You want us to stay put, sir?” the pilot asks over the headset.

“No,” Alex says. “We’ll either ride back with them or we’ll call for a pickup if needed.”

They touch down gently and when they get the all clear they remove their headsets and duck out of it, keeping low as they jog away swiftly.

As they get closer to the structure he can see that Canvers is pissed as hell, jaw clenched so hard that Alex is sure when the helo is gone that they’ll be listening to the grinding of his teeth.

“Jesus man,” Barrows says and Alex echoes the statement, though silently.

“Perkins and Daniels are guarding a door with our military guests locked behind it,” Canvers waves McDonald and Farrell past until it’s just Alex, Canvers, Barrows and Sullivan standing there.

They stand there, Alex with his laptop in the backpack slung across his shoulders, Sullivan clutching his to his chest like it’s a security blanket. Canvers clenching and unclenching his fists, grinding his teeth in anger and Barrows likely wondering if he should have stayed back at the base.

“So what are we looking at?” Alex asks when they all stand there in silence, staring at each other no one saying anything.

Canvers exhales loudly, drags a hand through his hair.

“It’ll be easier not to mention _quicker_ if we just show you.”

 

********************************

 

All the visible tech is about twenty years out of date, nothing state of the art here which if his dad had been running these facilities was probably the point.

The cameras are all old style black and white that are wired directly into the control room and Alex just about stops breathing when he realizes that there’s fucking _people_ in the rooms the cameras are aimed at.

“What the ever-loving fuck?” Barrows swears.

“They’re all Antarians?” Alex asks, he knows they are, but Jesus this means they’ve been _missing_ people and his father or people working _for_ his father had managed to scoop them up.

He knows they’ve likely they’ve been here for longer than Project Orion has been in operation, longer then Alex has been in the military.

Longer then Alex has even been _alive_ … but that doesn’t make it any better.

“Yes,” Nasy says from the door, he looks absolutely wrecked. “Alex…” he starts and there’s tears glistening in his eyes.

“We’re going to figure this out Nasy, don’t worry,” Alex says softly as Nasy approaches him.

Nasy pulls him over to the monitor bank and lays Alex’s hand over one of the screens, “Nasy?”

“That’s,” Nasy’s voice breaks and the grief there is so profound that Alex can just about feel it. “That’s Michael’s mom.”

 

********************************

 

“Show me the cells,” because that’s what those rooms are, they’re cells and these remaining Antarians are prisoners. He can only see seven visibly shown on the monitors, there’s more monitors then seven that are shut off and he doesn’t want to contemplate how many have died while they didn’t even know this place existed.

He knows what Antarians are capable of, there’s a wide range of abilities and most of them have all of them. He knows that includes Michael, Max and Isobel though he hasn’t pushed them to share that information with him or them.

There has to be something in the rooms, likely built into the walls or glass keeping them there and the sooner he gets eyes on what they’re working with the sooner he can figure out how to get them out.

“Sullivan see if you can dig up medical files on them,” he says as he lets Nasy lead him out of the room.

Nasy stops in front of the cell holding Michael’s mother and she’s an older woman, he wonders if her hair being gone is something that happened due to an underlying medical condition or was something that was done _to_ her.

He’d put money on it being something she was forced to endure, probably a way for them to dehumanize them that much more.

Nasy presses his hand to the glass and she just looks at him; then she notices Alex standing there in his uniform and the fear in her eyes, the way she backs away… it breaks his heart.

Nasy shakes his head and grabs Alex’s hand, presses it against the glass, his hand over top and she looks at him, at Alex and he can tell she doesn’t understand what Nasy is trying to say.

All she can see is Alex’s uniform and all she associates it with is the trauma she’s been subjected to.

Alex tries not to focus on the fear in her eyes and the way she’s backed as far away from the glass as she can. Instead he presses both hands to the glass and examines the corners where they’re sealed into the door frame.

“I’d put money on it being pressure sensitive glass,” Canvers says from behind them. “Sullivan can’t find any permits or anything for the building, so we don’t know for sure what they’ve retrofitted everything with.”

“It’ll all be wired to explosives I’m sure,” Alex says. “If they break the glass the whole place goes on lockdown and then goes up,” he says to Nasy.

“So how do we get them out?” Nasy asks, “we’re not leaving them in there.”

“No,” he looks at Michael’s mom and offers her the gentlest smile that he can. “Do you know her name?”

“Her name is Mara.”

“I need my computer, their computer room and Sullivan…” he takes a breath, “and I guess I need you to bring me whoever their highest rank on site is.”

Canvers looks pained, “That’s probably going to be the jackass that’s related to you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Alex sighs. “So let’s see which one my dad managed to get to do his dirty work here.”

 

********************************

 

The system is so old that he can’t connect wirelessly which is annoying as fuck, so he mutters to himself as he hardwires his laptop up to the bank of monitors and tries not to think about his computer touching this system. Next to him Sullivan already has his laptop wired up and he’s hoping that it’ll be a simple find the door locks and get the Antarian’s out of those cells.

Then pull whatever useable data they can from the computers that are older than he is, evacuate the building and do a controlled explosion.

“If the building blows up, but we’re doing it on purpose does that mean we don’t get the lunch?” Sullivan asks with all seriousness as he taps away on his keyboard.

“If the General is feeling like a cheapskate yes, but if we can document the controlled aspect of it…” the General will still push the ‘you blew something up’ thing, but Alex is sure the fact that it’s basically been a holding camp for Antarians they didn’t know about will work in their favor.

“ _Alex_?” Flint’s voice draws his attention away from his laptop and _of course_ it’s Flint, because Flint is the oldest. His dad wouldn’t allow anyone else this deep into his pet project unless he knew he could control them.

Canvers is gripping his arm tightly and Flint is pulling against it.

“Flint,” Alex says shortly. “You can let go of him Sergeant.”

Canvers just looks at him and Alex jerks his head, he’s got this. His father had been a monster but his brothers, when they’d been around, had done their best to shelter and shield him from their fathers’ abuse as much as possible.

They’d just not been around all that much.

“You shouldn’t be here, does _dad_ know you’re here?” Flint asks, he takes a step forward and Canvers shadows him further into the room. Flint shoots him a look that if it could kill, he’d be looking for another Sergeant and attempting to talk Nasy off an attempted murder charge.

“When was the last time you talked to him? Got orders from him?” Alex asks in a conversational tone, Flint looks confused before his face settles into an expression that Alex hasn’t seen on his brothers face before.

He’s angry, Alex can work with angry, because an angry Flint means a Flint that doesn’t have control over his temper or his tongue.

He’s _way_ too much like their father in that regard.

“Why are you asking?”

Alex smiles and turns slightly.

“No communication into the facility in about a month a half, 46 days to be exact, sir,” Sullivan says. 46 days would have been about when his dad was being strapped into a bomb vest and taken hostage by a shapeshifter and her mercenaries.

Alex can hear Sullivan’s fingers tapping on the keys, “there’s been attempts to reach Sergeant Manes several times a day for 44 of them.”

Flint is frozen where he’s standing, Alex can almost see the moment when it hits him that Alex isn’t here by just chance, that he hasn’t been sent by their father… that the men with him are all _with_ him, operating under his command.

“What have you done?” he breathes and Alex just looks at him.

“I’ve been doing my job, I think the better question is what have _you_ been doing?”

 

********************************

 

Flint has been operating out of this building for almost the entirety of his military career. It’ll take some digging to figure out how his dad managed to get Flint assigned here, how his dad managed to get _anyone_ assigned here.

That speaks to more than just his _dad_ running a defunct Project illegally, this speaks to someone much higher up the food chain that had to be feeding his dad personnel and money and the authority to continue the charade without any sort of oversight.

“Dad pulled most of the doctors out after Jim Valenti got sick,” Flint says, he’s been sitting at one of the tables with his head in his hands since Alex very carefully explained that their father was going down, a dishonorable discharge practically guaranteed.

And if he wasn’t very careful and very truthful Flint and everyone else here would be heading down the same path right alongside him.

“How did Jim get sick?” Alex asks, Canvers is standing guard behind Flint. Stone faced, arms crossed.

Flint waves a hand at one of the monitors, doesn’t even lift his head or make eye contact. “One of the aliens has the ability to cause cancer or something, Jim somehow got locked in the cell with him…” Flint raises his head finally and his eyes are wide and red, Alex doesn’t remember seeing him this pale even when their mom walked out and left all of them behind. “You don’t think dad…?”

“I think our father would do a lot of truly awful things to protect his mission, if he thought Jim was a viable _threat_ to that mission he would do what he felt he needed to do in order to remove that threat,” and that included killing him without raising a finger of his own hand to do so.

How better to prove to the soldiers that remained that the aliens were a threat then to have one of them kill a human.

“Canvers take him back to the others,” he says and Canvers nods, put a hand on Flint’s shoulder.

Flint looks wrecked when he walks out the door and Alex wishes he could feel something, _anything_ except extreme anger that his family name has been tied up in this. He wonders if Michael would think it presumptuous of him to change his name to something else, something that isn’t tied to a Manes legacy that he wants no part of.

He thinks of Michael growing up with no family while his mom was literal hours away going through several forms of hell, probably never even knowing that her son had survived.

He wants to give this to Michael. Give him the mother he never knew was still alive.

Give him family other than Max and Isobel and hopefully himself.

He looks up at the monitors and he can see Michael’s mom sitting on the floor, he can’t see Nasy but he knows that he’s sitting in the middle of the hallway in a mirror position, waiting for Alex to open the doors.

“What do you want us to do?” Canvers comes back through the door, Barrows right behind him. “If one of them can cause cancer of any sort…”

“We’re not leaving anyone here, _regardless_ of their abilities,” Alex says, “let’s find a hazmat suit to contain him just in case he can’t turn it off,” he looks at the monitors, “and then let’s get them out of those cells and be on our way.”

“What time did you tell Michael you’d be home?” Canvers asks.

“I didn’t, I told him I needed to wait for you to check in,” Alex looks blankly at his laptop. “How do I even explain this to him?”

“Honestly? Carefully, very, very carefully.”

 

********************************

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Family Ties 4/?**

 

 _Stuff to take care of, should be back in the afternoon?_ Alex finally texts Michael at midnight when it becomes readily apparently that this is going to take a lot longer than he thought.

He puts his phone away after that, Michael will text him back and then Alex will text him back and then it will lead to a phone call and Alex _knows_ if he actually talks to Michael he’s not going to be able to _not_ tell him what is going on.

And he can’t, he knows this. So he puts the phone away for now to remove the temptation to tell him ‘I found your mom!!!!’

“We’re going to need to send someone out for food,” Canvers says conversationally, his stomach very loudly grumbles about a second later as if to accentuate the fact that they missed dinner and are very close to missing breakfast.

“There’s some granola bars in my bag,” Alex says, “they should have some sort of break area, see what they’ve got for supplies. If they don’t have anything send a couple of people out to pick some stuff up.”

Canvers rummages through his backpack and pulls out the granola bars that Alex keeps stashed in there for when he forgets to eat and needs a quick tide-me-over.

He pointedly puts one down right across Alex’s keyboard, he keeps one and tosses the other two to Sullivan and Barrows.

“Eat that, or I tell Michael you’re skipping meals,” Alex rolls his eyes at him but peels the wrapper off and takes a bite. His stomach rumbles a bit, quieter then Canvers’ though still just loud enough that Canvers shoots him a self-satisfied look.

The General had sent a couple of cars to take control of the military members that had been onsite when Canvers and his team arrived. So Alex doesn’t need to worry about feeding them, he glances at the monitors, though…

“Ask Nasy to find out when they normally feed them and if they know the protocol for how it happens,” Alex says.

They’ve figured out how to get the doors open, but Alex is holding off on opening them until they figure out how exactly the explosive devices are wired into them and also whether the Antarian that Jim was exposed to is a threat to their continued health and survival.

But mostly because of the explosive devices.

He doesn’t want to open the doors and then find out there was weight sensors on the floor or some bullshit like that. His dad seems the type to have those type of redundancies built in.

When they open the doors they’re not going to be worrying about whether the building is going to blow up regardless of their efforts.

“So I found a drawing on the server for how the explosives are supposed to be wired in, it’s pretty rudimentary but there’s a handwritten proposal attached to the same file,” Sullivan says, “if they followed the original design to the letter; then the explosives are all wired into pressure points in the glass. Any attempt to break it or otherwise compromise the integrity of the glass sets off an alarm that someone would need to clear or silence, that doesn’t happen there’s a countdown of about 15 minutes for an evacuation protocol.”

“For a facility this large that’s not nearly enough time to clear all areas and then verify an all clear,” Canvers says.

“Because they were only worried about getting out military personnel, they likely had no intention of clearing the cells,” Alex states.

“Jesus what if there was an earthquake or something? Someone _really_ didn’t put a huge amount of thought into this,” Barrows mutters.

“But,” Alex starts, “this means we can get them out of those cells and let the EOD guys take care of the explosive issue.”

Sullivan throws his arms up in the arm, “11 days, lunch is still ours!”

Barrows punches him softly in the shoulder, “Fuck man, don’t jinx us.”

 

********************************

 

“So we can open the doors,” Alex says and he’s not prepared for Nasy to spring to his feet and throw his arms around him.

“Thank you, thank you,” he mutters and Alex pats his back awkwardly.

“But first I need to know if he can turn off his power?” Alex asks quietly, Nasy backs up a step and looks around the cells in confusion.

“Turn off?”

Alex nods his head in the direction of the cell that Flint pointed out to him, the elderly man in it is standing by the door and Alex doesn’t know what to call the expression on his face. It’s a mixture of sadness and pain with just a touch of anger.

“Jim Valenti, Kyle’s dad? Went into that cell and when he came back out he had cancer and was dead months later…”

“I don’t… he’s a healer?” Nasy says in confusion.

“Then they figured out how to weaponize him, I need to know if it’s something he can turn off or if we need to put him in the Hazmat suit that Barrows found.”

Alex wants to put him in the Hazmat suit for safety’s sake, his guys are here, _Nasy_ is here and he doesn’t want to put any of them at risk or expose any of them to something they can’t undo. But these Antarians have been victimized for years and they’re being rescued now, finally, but their rescuers are wearing the same uniforms that their tormentors wore.

“Can you ask him?” Alex asks gently. “If he can’t turn it off, if they figured out a way to keep his power on all the time then we’ll figure out how to help him once we’re out of here, okay?”

Alex turns away to give him privacy and his eyes meet Michael’s moms, she looks at him and her lips curve up just the slightest bit and he smiles back at her. There still a hint of fear there in her eyes, though he thinks any person wearing the uniform is going to get that reaction but there’s also a bit of hope now.

“I’ve been telling her about you,” Nasy says, reappearing at his elbow. “You and Michael, Max and Isobel and the guys,” he waves his hand to encompass their team, the members spread through this building and those back in Cannon awaiting their arrival.

“Tahl says that as long as he doesn’t touch anyone he can’t make anyone sick,” Nasy says, he looks sad, “he thought that might mean we would leave him here but I told him that we’d just put some gloves on him or we had a suit if he felt safer… he’s a healer, how badly would you have to treat someone to make his power a weapon?” Nasy turns back to the cell so Alex looks as well and the old man, Tahl, has his hands pressed against the glass and his eyes are watery with unshed tears.

“I don’t know,” Alex says through the lump in his throat, he has some ideas and he’s sure the videos that Sullivan had flagged for him will give him even more insight.

He’s not sure he wants that insight though.

“I’ll get Barrows to find some gloves for him,” Canvers says from the end of the hallway. “So I guess we’re ready when you are, sir.”

 

********************************

 

He trusts his team, so he trusts that each one of them knows exactly what they’re doing and when to do it.

Barrows finds some old leather driving gloves that he hands off to Nasy and then leaves them to it.

Alex himself hits the seven keystrokes that sends the command to open the cell doors.

They open one by one, each lock releasing echoes loudly in the silence of the hallway where Alex, Canvers, Whithers and Nasy are waiting for them to step out.

Somewhere else Perkins and McDonald are acquiring a vehicle or vehicles to transport their additional members in, Sullivan is pulling whatever electronic data he can off the computers; while Barrows has likely joined Farrell and Carmichael to pull all the hard copy files that they can fit into the backs of their vehicles.

Alex isn’t wasting a minute, once everyone is ready they’re moving out and back to Cannon where he can get everyone behind doors he knows are secure from their enemies because he and Sullivan programmed and tested them all themselves.

Where he can be back home and figure out how to introduce Michael to his mother when his mother is terrified of the uniform that Alex wears.

 

********************************

 

“Valenti,” Kyle answers the phone sounding half asleep; Alex can hear grumbling on the other side of the line that’s a mix of Max _and_ Liz so whatever was going has somehow resolved itself in a little over 48 hours.

“Don’t say my name,” Alex says, Canvers snorts from the driver’s seat and Alex ignores him.

“Okay,” Kyle drawls slowly, “It’s work,” he says in response to likely a query by Max. He can hear the faint rustling of sheets and shifting of the bed, then the soft clicking of a door closing. “What’s up? You know Michael thinks you’ve been kidnapped or something, right?”

“Would I have texted him if I’d been kidnapped? I’ll call him when I’m back on base,” Alex says, he has about 50 unanswered texts and just about as many missed calls from Michael.

“I think it was more the text was not illuminating at all and then you didn’t answer any of the other texts or calls or… did you just say you were off base, I thought you weren’t _allowed_ off base?”

“Special circumstance,” Alex says, he has Nasy and Michael’s mom in the car with him, he’s still not quite sure how that happened because he’d been fairly sure that all the Antarians were going to insist on staying together. But when they’d made their way out to the vehicles she’d followed along behind Nasy and climbed into the car like it was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Is special circumstance why you’re calling me at like three in the morning?” Alex winces, actually getting everyone and everything on the road had been a bit of a hassle, he probably shouldn’t have told Michael afternoon, he probably shouldn’t have locked himself into any time frame because the minute he missed it Michael was going to start worrying.

“Yeah, we’re about maybe 45 minutes out, can you meet us on base?”

“You know Michael is already super pissed off that I got to see your office before he did, if I get to find out why you’ve been incommunicado for just about two days before he does…”

“He is literally my first call when I get back.”

But not until then, because talking to Michael while the mother he doesn’t know exists sits in the backseat of the vehicle that Alex is riding in is surreal at a level that Alex isn’t willing to deal with yet.

 

********************************

 

Alex lets Canvers deal with Kyle and the Antarians and locks himself in his office and calls Michael.

“Alex?” Michael sounds frazzled, and Alex would laugh but he doesn’t think Michael would respond well to that.

“Hey.”

“Hey? _Hey_ he says, I was getting ready to try and strong-arm Max into filing a missing person’s report or something,” Michael says, and he’s definitely worked himself into a temper. Alex would like nothing more than to get in his car and drive home and curl up in their bed with the covers over their head and forget about the outside the world.

But the outside world contains seven new Antarians that Nasy hadn’t even known they should be looking for, one of them including Michael’s mom and opening up further questions as to whether there might be _other_ Antarians that Nasy doesn’t know about that have been scooped up by segments of Project Shepherd that shouldn’t even have been fucking operating.

Does this mean that Max and Isobel’s parents are out there as well; being held in sterile prison cells waiting for death but hoping for rescue?

He can’t decide if he’s hoping for a yes or a no, does finding Michael’s mom mean that his dad might be out there somewhere too?

“I know it’s early, but can you come to the base? Maybe bring Max and Isobel with you?”

“If I ask you what’s going on you’re going to tell me that you can’t tell me… aren’t you?” Michael asks, he sounds tired, Alex wonders if he just decided to not sleep at all while Alex was gone.

“Not over the phone anyway…” Alex says softly, he doesn’t apologize because he can’t change it, his job is what it is. And that job means that he doesn’t get to tell Michael everything. At the very least not over the phone

“Just us or…?” Michael starts.

“If Liz and Noah want to come they’re welcome to,” all the documentation is filed so he can allow that. Even if he thinks that maybe the introduction of the new seven should be kept to just Michael, Max and Isobel.

“I’ll call Max and Izzy, are you going to leave passes at the gate for us?”

“I’ll call them in,” Alex promises, “And I’ll have one of the guys come escort you on site.”

 

********************************


	5. Chapter 5

**Family Ties 5/?**

 

When Alex gets back to the makeshift infirmary all the Antarians have had showers and are now clad in plain gray sweatpants and t-shirts. Not a military symbol to be seen on any of them.

“They’re all healthy enough physically,” Kyle says, Canvers stands at his shoulder. “Whatever else they were subjected to they kept them well fed and hydrated anyway.”

Alex lets out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding.

“Canvers won’t let me touch the gentleman over there,” Kyle gestures with his clipboard at the man that Nasy had named Tahl, “So I walked him through the steps.”

Alex looks over at where Tahl is sitting hunched over on one of the beds, Nasy is sitting on one side of him, Mara the other and the others are all grouped around them on the floor. They all look small and scared and he hates it.

“No one in uniform in here,” he says quietly to Canvers, “let’s not stress them out anymore then we need to. So civilian clothes or as close as we can get for now.”

“I’ll let everyone know,” Canvers nods and wanders off to do just that.

Mara looks over at him and Alex smiles gently at her.

“Kyle,” Alex gestures for Kyle to follow him and he waves at Nasy to stay with their new guests.

“Do I even want to know where you found them?” Kyle asks.

“Your fathers notes had a few mentions of a facility and when I sent a team there they found them,” Alex says simply. He leaves out the part where one of the aliens is responsible for Kyle’s dad getting sick, Jim wouldn’t have been in that cell without his father.

The knowledge of it is too big and it weighs heavily on Alex’s conscience, he’s glad that Canvers had the foresight to keep Kyle away from Tahl. But he also knows that Tahl was simply the bullet in the loaded gun that his father pointed at Jim’s head, his dad was the one that pulled the trigger.

 

********************************

 

They’re all waiting in Alex’s office when Alex leads Kyle in.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Michael mutters and crosses his arms over his chest.

“Are you a medically trained health care professional and I somehow missed it?” Kyle asks, he’s rolling his eyes when Alex glances over at him.

Alex just shakes his head as he unbuttons his shirt and drapes it over the back of his chair, he rifles through the bag he keeps in his office with spare civilian clothing and pulls out a blue checked flannel shirt. He sets the jeans aside, he’ll need to do a quick change in the bathroom before he takes them back.

“I thought work called?” Max is asking Kyle and Kyle shrugs.

“Work, Alex; at this point it seems like I should be sending an invoice of my billable hours to the military.”

“Give Tulliver your information, he can probably get you set up faster,” Alex says absently as he keys his laptop on, he glances around the room at where everyone is staring at him. “Kyle is rendering services needed, we pay for those services.”

“So why are we here at seven am?” Max asks finally, Kyle perches on the arm of the couch next to Liz and she leans into him, laying her arm across Kyle’s thighs as if to hold him in place.

“I have some people I need to introduce you too, but I need to change first and then talk to you about some things.”

 

********************************

 

Nasy is in the office with them when Alex gets back, he doesn’t think he’s spilled the beans on their new guests though since Michael doesn’t leap up and demand to be taken to his mom.

“They needed a few minutes to decompress,” Nasy says when Alex shoots him a questioning look. He nods and shuts the door behind him, leans against the front of his desk and takes a breath.

“So Kyle gave me a bunch of stuff of his dads,” he starts, Max and Liz both look at Kyle in askance, he obviously hadn’t shared that information with them, Kyle doesn’t look back at them. Just keeps all his attention focused on Alex.

“It was written in code, likely to keep it hidden from my dad so he wouldn’t know what Jim was documenting. One of the things documented was a facility called Caulfield. I sent a team there a couple of days ago and they found…” Nasy makes a noise and Alex takes a breath. “It was being used as a holding camp for Antarians. We found seven still alive.”

“Oh my god,” Isobel breathes, Noah wraps both arms around her and holds her. Alex knows that what his team found, what he saw… that was the biggest fear of these three.

That someone finding out their secret would lead to them being held in some unknown location and experimented on, tortured until they died.

“Are they…” Max’s voice breaks, “are they okay?”

“They’re physically healthy,” Kyle says softly, he touches the top of Max’s bowed head.

Michael is sitting there silently, staring at him.

“They sent the doctors away after Jim Valenti got sick,” Alex says. “We didn’t find any more records after that of any experiments being performed on any of them.”

He meets Kyle’s eyes and he can tell that Kyle is doing the math in his head, and he’s figured out why they wouldn’t let him treat the one alien. He can’t tell if Kyle is mad at Tahl though, or angry at the person he should be angry with.

Jesse Manes.

“You found people,” Michael says slowly. “But you invited us here to meet them…”

“Her name is Mara,” Alex says gently. “We found your mother.”

 

********************************

 

“What if she doesn’t like me?” Michael says stopping suddenly in the middle of the hallway.

“You’re being stupid,” Isobel says.

“I’m not a little kid anymore, what if she…”

“You have a mom,” Isobel states in a no nonsense, take no prisoners sort of tone, “if you don’t want her then Max and I will certainly claim her as our own mother.”

Liz, Kyle and Noah have been left back in Alex’s office. Consensus had been to not overwhelm Mara or the others with too many other people. Once Michael, Max and Isobel have been introduced, if everyone is still calm then Alex will have someone bring them down.

Alex takes Michael’s hand, laces their fingers together and starts walking, he knows Michael will move with him, and the others will follow along.

“I told her, them about you. What your names are so they know what to call you,” Nasy says as Alex stops in front of the door.

It’s a simple door, no locks, they can come and go as the will, within reason of course.

Alex presses his fingers to the side of Michael’s face and Michael leans forward to kiss him.

Alex smiles and then turns the door handle, leading Michael into the room, Max and Isobel right behind him.

The whole room goes quiet when they step in; Alex can see the exact moment where Mara recognizes them, her eyes locking on Michael as she comes to her feet. Alex can see her trembling as Michael takes a step forward and her eyes are filled with tears, hands pressed together as if in prayer.

One of the others touches her shoulder gently and her whole face lights up with the sheer force of her smile.

“Mom,” Michael breathes and she surges forward as Michael takes two steps and goes to his knees. She wraps herself around him and Michael presses his forehead against her stomach as she holds him fiercely.

“My boy,” she murmurs, “my beautiful boy.” She tilts his head up, cradles his face in her hands and leans down to press kisses to his forehead. Michael is crying silently, shoulders shaking, and she just wipes the tears away with long fingers and _beams_ at him.

She notices Max and Isobel standing there by Alex and she doesn’t let go of Michael, just reaches out one hand and gestures them closer.

She gathers them up, touching Max’s face, then Isobel’s. She wipes away their tears as well and she laughs as she pulls them close to her.

The others start to move closer, touching Max, touching Isobel, hands stroking across Michael’s shoulders and Mara’s back. They wrap around the four of them, even Tahl with his hands still gloved touches them.

“They thought them lost,” Nasy says quietly. “They thought since they never heard anything about the children surviving that they had been killed when they got here.”

“Do you think the other parents are still alive?” Alex asks, he’ll have to keep going on Jim’s records. If Caulfield existed, that means there’s a chance of others.

“I hope so.”

 

********************************

 

“So let’s talk next steps,” the General starts.

Alex has left Michael, Max and Isobel with the survivors of Caulfield, he doesn’t think Michael is going to willingly leave his mother’s side if he has a choice, so Alex sees uncomfortable cots in his future while they wait for Mara and the others to be deemed well enough in both body and mind to leave.

He’s sent Liz, Kyle and Noah back with Canvers and given Tulliver explicit instructions for no interruptions.

He’s drawn the blinds and locked the door just to be on the safe side because he knows there will come a point where Michael is going to notice his absence and come looking.

“They’re all in good health for the most part, physically I don’t believe anything has been done to them for at least a year or more. The records that Sullivan pulled backs that up. We’ll have to wait until they talk to a therapist to see if they’re good mentally.”

The General nods and makes a note on something in front of him on his end.

“I’ll get you therapists on site in the next 24 hours, I don’t want to detain them longer than that unless we have to. We’re supposed to be the good guys here not the lesser of two evils.”

“I’m not restricting them any except for areas they wouldn’t have been allowed in without fifty background checks and sign off from you anyways, hopefully that will give them some slight piece of mind,” Alex says. “What about the military that we found monitoring the site?”

“We’ve finished questioning them. Likely will be some follow up questions when we start corroborating their official statements with the data you collected. But so far indications seem to be that only three of them had any sort of contact or even knew what was happening at the site,” the General says, “the rest were support staff and were kept away from the Antarians being held there.”

Alex nods, he figures that Flint is probably one of the three, probably the other two will be the closest in rank to him or older service members that his dad had trusted.

“The biggest question of the day is how your father managed to get sixteen members of the Air Force assigned to Caulfield in the first place,” the General says.

Alex taps his keyboard and pulls up the files that Sullivan had managed to pull for him on at least the three he thinks knew that the seven prisoners were aliens.

The same name is on the orders for all three of them, likely if he checked everyone on site the same name would be on all _their_ orders as well.

“Do we even _know_ a General Anders?” he asks and the General gives a shake of his head.

“He doesn’t seem to exist anywhere except on paper, I’ve got some of my computer boys and girls tracking back how far the identity goes. But I don’t like the ramifications of what this means.”

“We knew we had a leak somewhere,” Alex reminds him. His missing leg twinges as if to remind him that the only reason they even _know_ about that leak is because someone had supplied their mission schedule to a cell of decidedly _not_ friendly Antarians.

Disclosing not only where all their teams would be but also the duty roster which outlined who was assigned where, including which team Nasy was assigned to. It’s unspoken, but they all know that Nasy was the real target in that ambush. They’d just gotten in the way.

“A leak is one thing; _this_ is definitely something else,” the General says.

“My father couldn’t have done this on his own,” Alex says. “If he were just running Project Shepherd out of his bunker that would be one thing, but running an entire facility designed to contain and torture any Antarians that were unfortunate enough to fall into their hands, _with_ military support assigned to it…”

“I’ve got my guys and girls following the money trail, a cursory glance doesn’t show it being funded through any of the usual channels which means the money stream is coming from somewhere else.”

“What about those assigned?”

“I’ve got someone tracing back the orders to see if they can determine where the requests originated from, a couple of the support staff were Airman right out of tech school,” the General sounds frustrated, normally the General sounding like that means someone is going to lose a head. “It stinks to high heaven.”

“So we follow the paper trail and see if it leads us to a digital one,” Alex says. He’s got the rest of Jim’s stuff to go through. They’ve got all the new stuff from Caulfield that needs to be sorted through and documented.

“I think it might be time to explore those dark web options after all,” the General says slowly.

“I thought we didn’t want to deal with ‘those’ type of people.”

The General glares at him a bit, because Alex is reminding him of something that Alex offered up as an option when he lost his leg and was on bedrest for way longer then his brain could handle inactivity for.

“I think _those_ type of people might be the ones that give us our best leads at this point.”

 

********************************

 

He takes a minute after the General disconnects the call and just sits there with his head in his hands and breathes. He’s tired, the sort of tired where he knows if he doesn’t keep moving he’s going to doze off with his eyes open and lose five hours that he can’t afford to.

He gives himself five minutes, then starts sending e-mails.

He sets Sullivan on continuing to mine the data from Jim’s records. He’ll handle the data mining from the Caulfield records.

Canvers he leaves monitoring the Caulfield survivors until the medical help the General is sending gets there.

Barrows he puts in charge of cataloging the physical evidence brought back from Caulfield and puts the caveat of he can choose two helpers to assist.

The rest he leaves on their regular duties for now. Nasy he doesn’t give an assignment to because he’s going to have his hands full with the Caulfield survivors for as long as they’re on site.

His crutch is laid across the filing cabinet behind him so he grabs it to hook over his arm before he even attempts to stand. His knee feels stiff, and he limps over to unlock the door feeling exactly how he’d expect to feel after not getting any actual sleep for more than 48 hours.

Michael is leaning against the wall staring at the door, Tulliver periodically glancing up from his computer.

“Hey,” Alex smiles at him and Michael pushes off from the wall and walks him back into his office. He shuts the door firmly in Canvers’ face and then pulls Alex into his arms.

Alex wraps his arms around him and holds on tight, letting Michael bury his face in the curve of his neck as they sway slightly.

“You disappeared,” Michael mumbles into his neck and Alex works the crutch off his arm and lets it clatter to the floor, then winds his fingers into Michael’s curls and pulls gently.

“I had to call the General, report out,” Alex says, he tugs Michael’s head up so he can look at him and there’s a lightness in his eyes that Alex doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

He’s known they’re not alone, but up until now the only _other_ Antarian they’d met was Nasy. Was this sense of lightness he can see because he’s now got absolute, physical proof that they’re not alone?

“You found my mom,” Michael says, he cups Alex’s face in his hands and peppers kisses across his cheeks, his nose, soft kisses to his lips, biting gently on his lower lip. He pulls him flush up against his body and Alex sighs against his mouth even though he knows he’ll need to put the kibosh on things fairly soon.

Michael closed the door, he didn’t lock it.

They get the warning of two taps before the door opens and Canvers peers in with his hands over his eyes.

“You’re fine Sergeant,” Alex rolls his eyes, tugs on Michael’s curls one more time because he can and then limp walks over to a chair.

Michael smirks and winks at him as he leans down to pick up the crutch and lean it against the arm of chair while he perches on the edge of Alex’s desk.

“I didn’t think you had enough time, but I’ve managed to not walk in on anything ever and I’d like to keep it that way if at all possible,” Canvers says as he walks in and pointedly doesn’t shut the door behind him.

“We’re on base,” Alex points out. Because there’s just some things that will not happen, ever, no matter how many times Michael looks at him with that smile and those eyes and those fucking curls.

“So word from the General?”

“Doctors coming, two therapists, barring any complications we should be able to release them in a couple of days,” Alex says, Michael’s hand comes down on his shoulder and squeezes.

There’s one guest room at the cabin, he thinks that might give them enough time to get it aired and cleaned out before Michael is going to move his mother in with them.

“Isobel will take care of it all if we let her,” Michael says, mind going it seems in the same direction his is.

“So that’s one taken care of, what about the others?” Canvers asks.

“We’ve got the stipend from the General for situations like this,” Alex reminds him. “Worse case we find a nice low key house to rent and help them set up. Chances are Nasy isn’t going to wander very far from them for a while.”

 

********************************


	6. Chapter 6

**Family Ties 6/?**

 

The doctors sent by the General arrive in just shy of 16 hours, Alex isn’t sure where they were pulled from but they’re all ones that Alex has dealt with on both a personal and a professional basis before.

Which means he knows how good they are at what they do.

“If things go well we’ll need the room ready sooner rather then later,” Alex says when he’s sitting with Michael, Max and Isobel at the table in his office eating lunch that had been delivered by a yawning Kyle. Alex had offered up the option of eating with them but Kyle had waved it off muttering, “sleep, precious sleep.”

“I can go open some windows up,” Max offers, like he knows that the only way Michael is leaving is if he gets to take his mom and Alex with him.

Of course, the only reason Michael is sitting with him _now_ , that they’re eating lunch at his table instead of in the makeshift infirmary, is because Mara is talking with the therapists and the others are getting official physicals that will lead to the doctors signing off on them leaving the premises.

“We were playing with my phone and I had her pick some things out,” Isobel says. “Some bedding and some new curtains, a couple pictures for the walls… I think we might have found a lamp to go in the living room as well.”

“Are you decorating _her_ room or our entire cabin?” Alex asks suspiciously exchanging a confused look with Michael.

“You’ve never seemed to be that avid a hunter, I think the whole cabin can use some sprucing up,” Isobel says defensively.

“You were only on your phone for like forty minutes, how on earth…?” Michael starts.

“Maria and Liz have both been helping, sending links and Pinterest pages and I told her if she ends up not liking something we can always replace it.”

 

********************************

 

He sends Michael with Max to get the house ready and to wait for the packages that Informed Delivery has told him are incoming.

Isobel must have next day, or same day shipped _everything_.

The tap on his door is not surprising, he’s had a steady stream of people wanting further clarifications on assignments which is really just them all checking up on him to make sure he’s not passed out behind his desk due to exhaustion or spontaneously lost a limb or gotten shot again. He’s more surprised by who it actually is on the other side.

“Enter,” he calls out and Mara peers her head around the corner.

“Hi,” he says as he pushes himself to his feet, he’s longing for the cabin and locked, secured doors where he can lounge around in sweat pants and not have the prosthetic still on.

She walks into his office with slow steps, the sweatshirt looks huge on her and he doesn’t care what any of the doctors say about their physical health she doesn’t look like she was getting enough to eat, ever.

“You told them to not come see us with uniforms on,” she says, she has a soft lilting voice. She _sounds_ like what he’d imagined a mother sounding like when he was a kid.

He’s not talked to his mom in months, he should probably call her but he also doesn’t want to explain his part in his dad and now brothers subsequent downfalls. And he’s fairly sure at least _one_ of his brothers will have already called her in to fill her in on what’s happening.

“You’ve been through a trauma at hands that wore this uniform no need to exacerbate the issue,” he gestures at the one he’s currently wearing because he’s in his office and he’s not entered her sanctuary.

“We can tell the difference,” she says, she sits in the chair on the other side of his desk, legs crossed neatly at the ankle, hands twined together in her lap. “But thank you nonetheless.”

“You don’t need to thank me for that,” he says.

“My husband, Michael’s father, he is military, from a long line of military men and women,” she says. “I’ve long ago had to come to terms that not everyone who wears a uniform wears it in the same manner. He is an honorable man, you are as well Nasedo tells me.”

“Nothing I do is particularly honorable,” Alex says. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

She smiles at him, it’s gentle and kind and he wishes he could have given this to Michael _years_ ago. When Michael had been a child and not had to build walls to keep himself emotionally safe from being hurt by people who were supposed to be taking care of him.

“That’s why it’s honorable, you see people and you want to help. The others they saw a threat that was here to destroy everything they held dear.”

 

********************************

 

Mara stays in his office, though she moves to curl up on the couch. Nasy comes looking for her before Michael returns and Alex isn’t sure what thoughts are running through his head at the sight of Mara flipping through a magazine that Isobel had left behind and Alex behind his desk sorting through the data in the Caulfield files.

“I wondered where you had disappeared to,” he says as he stands at the doorway. He’s got that panicked look on his face that means he’s likely been searching for a while and finally had come to tell Alex that he’d somehow misplaced Michael’s mom in a secure building.

“I wanted to talk with the young man that has stolen away my sons’ heart,” Mara says, she doesn’t look up from the magazine though Alex can see her lips curved into a smile.

“I could have brought you,” Nasy says.

“They’re free to roam the grounds,” Alex says, “just not anywhere that requires key card access. We’re not going to confine them, they’ve already been confined enough.”

Nasy still looks like he’s fretting, and Alex makes the hand motion to gesture him into the office.

“What’s going on Nasy?” he asks when Nasy perches on the chair Mara had originally occupied. Mara goes back to her magazine, but Alex can tell her entire focus is on them.

“I just…” Nasy rubs a hand over his face,” if they had one facility that we didn’t know about…”

“I’m already on it,” Alex cuts him off. “Sullivan is continuing to go through Jim’s records, I’m searching through the files we got from Caulfield. If they had another facility, we’ll find it.”

“I need to go through my ships data files too,” Nasy says miserably. “I didn’t have any record of a ship carrying Mara or Tahl off of Antar, how many others have we missed because I didn’t have record of them fleeing?”

“We filed a flight ticket,” Mara says in confusion. “I remember that…”

“I buried my ship, but what if someone found it? Tampered with the files so I wasn’t getting all the information I needed? Or intercepted the transmissions before I ever even got them.”

“Why Mara though? Or Tahl, is there some reason that someone wouldn’t want them found?”

Mara and Nasy exchange a look and there’s such pain in Mara’s expression that Alex wishes he could take it back. But he also needs to know what’s happening or already happened, so he can either fix it or put a contingency plan in place to contain the fall out.

“Is there any chance that they could have gotten off the planet? If they removed you, they would have an even bigger reason to remove them. They wouldn’t want them found,” Nasy says quietly.

“I don’t know,” Mara says brokenly, she looks so small curled up on the couch, she sets the magazine aside and brushes at her cheeks. “I never even saw them again after they sent our babies away. I made my way to my ship on my own because they sounded the alarm to evacuate.”

“Mara…” Nasy starts.

“He’s speaking of my husband,” Mara says she looks directly at Alex, eyes locked on him, “He was our King’s High General… the last I saw of him he was trying to convince Zan to flee.”

Alex looks over at Nasy, at where Nasy is looking at anywhere but Alex.

“Nasy…”

“None of their names showed up on the list of flight plans,” Nasy says. “I had no reason to even think they would be alive, that we should be actively searching for them.”

“Which one of them would have tampered with the pods?” Alex asks.

“What do you mean?” Mara asks, “Nasedo what does he mean?”

“Someone…” Nasy winces, “Someone tried to program the pods to overwrite the children with their parents.”

“What?” she hisses, and for all that her face has lost _all_ color she looks pissed.

“And someone else figured out what was happening and wrote a side program to combat it, basically caused the pods to malfunction in the long run before the initial program even had a chance to run,” Alex says. “Nasy hasn’t been able to determine who would have been able to get close enough to do that.”

Mara is silent for long seconds, long enough that Alex is contemplating figuring out how to get to his cellphone and send an SOS to Michael to come back.

She swallows visibly.

“There’s an old ‘procedure’,” she starts, “It fell out of favor years ago, long before I was born. But when we were actively cloning children instead of having them naturally it was something that was done, to take the consciousness of the original and layer it over the clone… but there started to be degradation in the clones, they weren’t living but a handful of years.”

“They outlawed the procedure in its entirety, no one should have even had the knowledge of how to perform it or how it was performed,” Nasy says quietly. “What was attempted on the children would have been a crime that if it had succeeded, even just the tiniest bit, it warranted execution.”

“And the children are just that, they’re our _children_ , they’re not clones of Rath or Zan or Vilandra, I don’t even know if the layering would have worked, genetically they’re a match but they’re not a _perfect_ match and the program wouldn’t know what to do with the differences,” Mara says.

“It didn’t work,” Alex feels like someone needs to say it. To reinforce that whatever else they're dealing with that, that it didn't work. “Do you know who would have access to the pods in order to try though?”

“All the parents had access until they loaded the pods onto the ship to evacuate,” she says. “But none of us… we were sending them away to save them. None of us would have done something that would have endangered them further.”

 

********************************

 

Mara goes back to the others with Nasy, heads bent close together and Alex knows that he’ll get an official request for Nasy to start trying to decipher what happened or is still happening with his ships computer. How they missed the ship that came down with Mara and the others...

How many other ships were missed? How many others could his father and his compatriots have locked up in cells like the ones they found Mara in.

He thinks of General Anders and wonders who he could be. Is he a fragment of his father? A figment that doesn’t really exist?. He doesn’t think his father is smart enough or savvy enough to have put something like that in place, he thinks General Anders is a flesh and blood person, and he thinks that person is likely getting more and more pissed off every time they squash another part of Project Shepherd.

He thinks when he starts digging that General Anders is going to predate his father. And there's no if anymore, he will _definitely_ be digging. It does raise the red flag of if they should be worrying about who the Antarians had been fleeing from and whether they might already have had operatives on the ground before they ever even gave the signal to begin evacuating Antar.

“You look like you’re thinking heavy thoughts,” Barrows comments from the door. “Do I need to give you ten more minutes or do you want to come see what we managed to find?”

 

********************************

 

They’ve gotten almost everything that had been in storage at Caulfield sorted through, the tech easily identifiable put aside for Nasy to look at, the stuff that looks like it might have some _component_ of alien tech put aside for Nasy and _Alex_ to look at.

But there’s other stuff, chief among them are sixteen manila legal envelopes that have what looks like personal effects stacked on top of them. The envelopes all have a series of numbers written across them in black sharpie, Alex is sure if they cross reference the numbers in the information they’re mining from the Caulfield data that they’ll figure out who belongs to what.

“Jesus,” he mutters crossing his arms over his chest; there are rings and jewelry, the type of miscellaneous items that you would have in your pocket or on your person on any given day.

“I gave Sullivan a list of the numbers from the envelopes, at least we can give them back these,” Barrows says.

“There’s sixteen of them,” Alex says, that means nine died because they weren’t quick enough to save them, because they didn’t know they needed rescuing.

“Don’t do the ‘what if’ thing,” Barrows mutters. “I already did that and had to go have a good I’m not crying cry in the bathroom.”

“They treated them like they were fucking convicts,” he says. It’s almost as distressing as he’s sure the video’s he’s going to have to watch are going to be. He should probably make sure the General is going to have a therapist assigned directly to them for the next little while.

At least while the Caulfield survivors are processing their new circumstances, while Sullivan and Alex have to weed through data files that are likely going to contain graphic, not for all audiences’ material.

But they need to figure out what was done to them, once they know that they can figure out how to help them and what they’re helping them with.

 

********************************


	7. Chapter 7

**Family Ties 7/?**

 

They’ve matched the seven envelopes to the survivors and Alex takes Barrows with him when he goes to the seven survivors to give them back belongings that should never have been taken from them in the first place.

When they dump the envelopes out on their beds, the tears are about what breaks him. Mara slides a ring back on her finger and just holds her hands to her chest like she’s in pain.

He knows it’s not physical, and he hopes for her sake, for _Michael’s_ sake that they have an actual chance to find others they might have missed.

To find her husband or other relatives.

Barrows is looking decidedly misty eyed when they turn to go, he feels like they’re intruding now.

“I’m fine sir,” Barrows says, he sighs. “Though is there another assignment I can trade off with? I think if I turn up any more envelopes like that I might need a mental health day.”

“I’d hope that’s the most of the personal belongings we’ll find. Though we still haven’t found clothing or anything,” Alex says. “But see what Canvers needs an assist on if you need something to break it up.”

“They were treating it like a prison, I wouldn’t put it past them to just incinerate the clothing, half wondering why they didn’t try and destroy everything.”

“Probably something else for them to hold over their heads, use the return of a personal item to reward good behavior or something.”

It sounds like something his dad would do, Alex has distinct memories of his childhood and his dad doing that exact thing.

 

********************************

 

Michael is waiting in his office, lounging back in the chair legs sprawled out in front of him, when Alex gets back to it with the other nine envelopes in hand. There’s a Rubbermaid container that smells delicious sitting in the middle of his desk and he starts drooling almost immediately.

“Oh my god,” Alex stops dead in the doorway and just breathes in the scent. It’s something with chicken and it smells heavenly.

“I put some stuff in a crockpot for later,” Michael says, twisting in the chair so he can look at him and he has a hopeful expression on his face; Alex grins at him, drags fingers through his curls as he passes him.

“I’m just waiting for the doctors to give us an all clear,” Alex says, he puts the envelopes to the side and uses both hands to pop the top off the container and closes his eyes. “I didn’t realize how much I was getting tired of take out.”

Michael has left a fork sitting there in the middle of the desk and Alex taps it against the side of the container. “You didn’t bring anything for yourself?”

“Max demanded food in compensation for helping out with all the boxes Isobel left us to deal with, so I ate with him then brought the rest of the leftovers here, I separated some out for you and mom because I’ve seen your guys eat before,” the expression on his face when he says the words ‘mom’ is almost giddy.

The fact that he has a mom and she’s a _real_ person that he can touch is likely not going to get old for him at any time in the near future.

“How bad is the damage?” Alex asks, Michael’s been gone for a couple of hours and while it _is_ a bit of a hike out to the cabin and back again he hadn’t thought that he’d be gone for that long.

“Max made me shower too,” Michael shrugs, “Liz and Maria have gone out there at least once, either that or you have some really helpful fairies that read minds and they basically removed anything that screamed a single hunter lives here.”

“So the deer head in the living room is gone?”

“Max is hopeful it’s not a family heirloom that is going to end up mounted on a wall in Valenti’s apartment.”

“Well they spend most of their time at Max’s so at least he won’t be able to see it if it is?”

Michael makes a face that indicates that he doesn’t want to discuss his brothers ‘relationship’ with Kyle at all and would rather not think about what the two of them (three if they count Liz in there) get up to in their private time. Alex would push that button, but Michael brought him food and he really doesn’t want him to take it away in retaliation.

“True,” Michael allows.

Tulliver appears in his doorway and he waits for Alex to acknowledge him.

“Doctor Jackson wants to know if you have a few minutes?”

Alex looks at Michael and Michaels raises an eyebrow at him, Alex shakes his head minutely and Michael smirks at him.

“I’m going to hang out with my mom for a bit, let me know when you’re ready,” he says pushing himself to his feet. He stretches and his t-shirt raises up just enough that Alex can see the hint of his stomach which he’s sure was the intent behind the movement.

He ignores it because they’re still in his office and Tulliver is still standing the doorway.

“I’ve got my car here,” Alex reminds him, just in case he forgot.

“No you don’t, Max took your car to the cabin so we could all ride home together,” Michael says and Alex stares at him and then twists to search the front pocket of his laptop bag. No keys, when he turns Michael’s got them dangling from his fingers. “Brought them back just in case you need them to lock up before we leave.”

 

********************************

 

“Doctor Valenti’s initial assessment of their physical state was correct,” Evie says as they sit at the table, his door is closed but not locked because it’s a private conversation giving him the details but not top secret enough to warrant locked doors and drawn blinds.

“Even Tahl?” Alex queries.

“Yes, he appears to be able to control his abilities now that he’s in an environment that he knows to be safe. It was a good call to keep the uniforms interacting with them to a minimum, it allowed him to regain equilibrium faster than he likely would have otherwise. There should be a worksheet with Brian’s findings in there as well indicating that. He knew he wasn’t safe at Caulfield and as such his body kept him in a perpetual state of needing to defend himself.”

“I’m surprised they’re not worse off physically,” Alex says.

“I’m not completely satisfied, they definitely kept them on the lowest end of caloric intake possible for them to still be able to function and live. They’re all underweight but those are all things that can be easily fixed with a steady diet plan.”

“So tell Michael to lay off the carbs and maybe tone things down in the spice level?”

“Only if you want to punish yourself, she can eat them, just in moderation. There’s no time span, we won’t be performing home visits and taking away custody of his mom if she doesn’t reach a target weight within a few weeks’ time span.”

“Slow and steady wins the race,” Alex murmurs. It was something Evie had told him back when he’d lost his leg and was pushing himself to be back on two feet and back in the field right _fucking_ now.

“Yes, slow and steady wins the race,” she smiles at him. “Maybe some shakes in the morning to get things moving in the right direction.”

Alex makes a face because he’d come to loathe his morning shakes, though he can admit they were helpful at the beginning.

“So we’re good to release them is what you’re telling me?”

“Therapy every other day at least for the first couple of weeks, they can either come back here or we can visit them at their residence, whichever they feel more comfortable with.”

“We’ll leave that decision up to them,” Alex decides. They’ve had the ability to make so few decisions that this seems like a basic one to allow them. They might feel safer talking to therapists outside their safe space, but it should be their choice.

Evie nods in approval.

“Okay, Canvers should have paperwork started for all of them and I think Nasy and Perkins found someplace for them to go that doesn’t scream military installation…” Alex has a list in front of him, he thinks they’ve covered or are in the process of covering all their bases.

“I’ll give you warning, because you hate surprises, but come Monday morning I want to look at your leg,” Evie says idly. Like she’s hoping to sneak it into the conversation so Alex won’t notice.

“It was just because we spent so much time at Caulfield,” Alex says defensively even as he makes a note to add to his calendar.

“I already had Tulliver add it to your calendar.”

 

********************************

 

They have a mostly silent trip to the cabin where Michael has his mom sitting between them in the truck pointing out random things while Alex leans his head against the window and dozes with his eyes open.

He must actually _close_ his eyes at some point because he totally misses arriving at the cabin, bumpy driveway and all and only is startled awake when Michael opens the passenger door and he loses his head rest.

“When was the last time you actually slept?” Michael asks as Alex fumbles for his seatbelt, Mara is already out of the truck standing on the porch and waiting for them.

“What are we calling sleep? Like consecutive hours of unconsciousness, or can I count the catnaps I got while hiding from the people who report to me in the bathroom?” he asks as he slides out, he might need the crutch to get into the house but for the moment he lets the truck support him.

Michael sighs at him and brushes his fingers over Alex’s cheeks, cradling his face in his hands and kissing him gently. It’s a nice welcome home, and Alex slumps into him, linking his fingers into Michael’s belt loops to keep him close for a moment.

Michael wraps his arms around him, holds him tight.

“Come on, we’ll get everyone inside and you can take off your leg and get comfortable and mom can unpack the boxes that Isobel got for her.”

Alex doesn’t know if he feels comfortable taking his prosthetic off, especially if Mara doesn’t know about it… but he also knows that she’s living with them for at least the interim and he can’t wear the prosthetic all the time.

 _All_ his doctors including Kyle will throw a hissy fit.

 

********************************

 

At least the outside looks the same because the inside looks completely different.

“Did they paint or something?” Alex asks because the living room looks a _lot_ brighter than the last time he was at home, and that feels like forever ago but not _so_ long ago that he’s forgotten what his cabin looks like.

“New curtains,” Michael waves, “and Isobel said the lighting was atrocious, so she got a couple of lamps, some pictures for the wall and some picture frames for us to put actual pictures in.”

There’s a couple already on the mantle, some of Liz, Maria, Kyle and Alex from high school, some of Michael, Isobel and Max that have obviously been taken over the span of years that Alex wasn’t there.

But the one that catches his eye is the well-worn one of him and Michael with their guitars and Alex touches it.

He hasn’t seen it in forever.

“I need to get a better copy of it,” Michael says from behind him, he wraps his arms around Alex and rests his head on Alex's shoulder. Alex looks at the carefree teenagers in that picture that hadn’t known how badly life was going to shit all over them in the following months.

They hadn’t even been together when that picture was taken, just friends though Alex had hoped for more.

Alex twists in Michael’s arms and looks at him, smiles as he leans into kiss him and feels Michael’s lips curving into a smile as he kisses him back.

“I love you,” he murmurs against Michael’s lips.

Michael’s hands are infinitely gentle when they brush against the sides of his face and he hadn’t even realized he closed his eyes until Michael draws his thumbs across them. He opens them, and all he can see are Michael’s bright eyes shining with love that he prays that Michael can see reciprocated in his own.

He doesn’t know what he did to deserve to be able to have this. But he’s ever so thankful.

“I love you too.”

 

********************************

 

Alex takes a shower while Michael finishes getting whatever pork thing he’d had going in the crockpot ready and if he stays in there, sitting in the chair just letting the water run down and closes his eyes for a few minutes no else is any the wiser.

Michael probably knows since he’s lounging on the bed, cellphone in hand when he finally comes out on his crutches with a towel wrapped around his waist and he’s oh so tempted to just curl up in the bed beside Michael, let his body heat warm him and lull him to sleep.

But he can hear Mara moving around in the living room, and he can smell dinner which makes his stomach rumble and he’s _not_ going to sleep when it’s still light out because that will throw his entire sleep schedule off and he needs to get it back on track.

He pulls on sweatpants instead of shorts, he’s not sure if Mara is even aware that he’s missing a limb, it’s not a topic that he’s broached with her, but he also doesn’t want to startle her with putting it right out there in her face.

The worn t-shirt that Michael hands him is not one of his but he puts it on anyway and is rewarded with a leer and a kiss that kind of makes him wish that Mara had chosen to go with the others to the house instead of with them.

But he also knows that the guest room is on the opposite side of the cabin so when it is time for bed (read dark out), he can curl up in bed with Michael and while he’s probably not going to be good for anything but sleep by that point there’s always the morning.

“Your mom,” Alex says breathlessly, if anything Michael’s grin gets brighter and he nips at Alex’s lip, then presses an open-mouthed kiss to his jaw.

“I’ve come to realize that I really don’t like sleeping alone,” Michael says.

Alex rests his head in the curve of Michael’s neck and breathes.

“Yeah, I’m not a fan of it either.”

 

********************************

 

After they stuff themselves on dinner that tastes as good as it smells they relax in the living room, Mara in the recliner Michael and Alex sitting on the couch.

Michael is showing Mara how to navigate the laptop and work the Netflix and Hulu accounts, Alex is listening to Michael explain the difference between the shows and setting her up her own account so she doesn’t have to weed her way through Alex’s crime shows and Michael’s comedies and sci fi.

He’s resting his legs on Michael’s and Michael has his hand resting on his knee, he knows that Mara can tell there’s nothing below the knee, but she hasn’t said anything. Hasn’t even reacted really.

Which honestly, he appreciates more then he can probably articulate coherently at the moment.

He must doze off at some point, because when he blinks his eyes open it’s dark out, Michael is still touching him with one hand and his mother had his other hand cradled in hers.

“You should have Tahl look at it,” she’s saying and Michael makes a noise that sounds like pain from the way she’s poking at it.

“Max wanted to heal it,” Michael says, “but we… we couldn’t take the chance.”

Alex reaches out to touch his arm and Michael startles like he’s been spooked.

“It hurts you,” Mara says softly, “you don’t need to live with this pain, if Tahl or Max can heal it even just a little then you should allow them to.”

“It’s a reminder,” Michael says stiffly,” that not every human is like Alex, not even the ones that share the same genes as him.” Alex swallows roughly, he wants to cry. Wants to tell Michael that he doesn’t need to bear this pain because of him.

Not anymore.

He sits up, though Michael lays his arm firmly over Alex’s legs to keep him from moving them. It’s awkward to lean into his side but he does.

“We don’t need that reminder anymore,” Alex says quietly. “He’s gone, if Max or Tahl can heal it you should let them at least try,” he folds the hand that Michael has clamped on his knee between his, links their fingers together.

“We’re safe, he can’t hurt either one of us, not anymore, not ever again,” he says, it’s a statement of fact, a promise and Michael shudders.

“It’s not fair though,” Michael whispers. And he’s looking at Alex’s leg.

“I’m pretty sure regrowing a leg is firmly out of Tahl or Max’s wheelhouse,” Alex laughs, and he’s come a long way from when he dreamed of finding a way to do just that. They deal with aliens on a daily basis, surely one of them…

But even alien technology had only progressed so far Nasy had insisted. They’d mastered space travel, but not limb regeneration so Alex put that pipe dream aside and focused on what was available to him in the here and now.

So he’s got the prosthetics, and his crutches and yes they’re not perfect, but he’s mobile and he’s still able to do his job and that’s really all that matters to him.

Besides having Michael and his friends back, which in those dark days when he’d first lost it he’d never thought even remotely possible.

“Then I’ll build you a better one,” Michael states and Alex smiles at him.

“And you’ll let Max or Tahl look at your hand,” Alex says and Michael rolls his eyes but doesn’t say no. “We’ve let my dad rob enough time from us, it’s time to start taking it back.”

 

********************************


	8. Chapter 8

**Family Ties 8/?**

 

He wakes before the sun comes up, he’s warm and in bed. Michael curled around him like he means to protect him in his sleep. He’s not sure from what, they’re as safe as Alex can make them in the cabin.

Michael shifts behind him, arm tightening over his chest and it takes a moment to wriggle free of the hold.

“Bathroom,” Alex murmurs when Michael opens one eye to find out why Alex is trying to escape his octopus-like arms.

Michel grumbles something nonsensical and lets go, he buries his face in Alex’s pillow and Alex runs his hand over sleep tangled hair and grins down at where Michael has pushed half the covers off the bed. He leans down to kiss a bare shoulder and Michael mutters something but doesn’t open his eyes.

His crutches are right where he left them, and he gets himself to the bathroom, he doesn’t close the door or turn on the light. Just does what he needs to and washes his hands, feeling around for the towel that Michael always moves on him so he can dry them.

His spot is still warm when he climbs back in, warm enough that he pulls off his t-shirt and curls into the warm curve of Michael’s body.

“Still dark, go back to sleep,” Michael brushes his lips over his cheek, arm curling back around him as he rolls onto his back and brings Alex with him so he’s half sprawled over top of him.

Alex lays his head on Michael’s shoulder and closes his eyes. He’s not really tired, but he can close his eyes and be still so they can lay here together in the quiet.

He lays there and doesn’t think about the fact that he could be showering, getting ready for the day even though he doesn’t need to go anywhere. The only place he needs to be is in this cabin making sure Mara has what she needs and Michael has what he needs.

Michael’s hand curves around his shoulder, fingers stroking against his skin lightly. It makes him shiver and he hides his grin in Michael’s shoulder, though he’s sure Michael can feel it against his skin.

“I thought you were sleeping,” he laughs softly and Michael tugs him incrementally closer, hands locking together against his lower back and Alex already knew he wasn’t wearing anything under the sheet he had pulled up to his hips but now he can feel that he’s hard against his thigh.

“Your mom,” he manages to say before Michael kisses him, hard. All tongue and teeth and heat.

“So no screaming my name,” Michael says between kisses, he rolls them over so Alex is on his back, coming up to his knees beside him to get Alex’s boxers down and off and then settles himself in the space between Alex’s thighs.

He grinds down roughly and Alex groans into Michael’s mouth and throws out a hand in the general direction of where Michael normally keeps the lube and condoms within easy reach.

“We in a rush sweetheart?” Michael laughs, though he also leans away to get the lube, drops a condom right to Alex’s arm.

“I can take care of it myself if you want to just lay there and watch,” Alex says sweetly and Michael bites his lip, then kisses him gently.

“Maybe some other time,” Michael leers at him as he pops the lube open and sits back, resting on his haunches while he drags a hand down Alex’s leg. He works him open one finger, two fingers, the squeeze of three while he keeps Alex’s eyes locked with his own.

It feels like he’s in his head and not ever going to be close enough.

“Enough,” Alex murmurs, he doesn’t break eye contact with him, just presses his fingers into Michael’s knee while the other hand rummages for the condom that he knows is there, “it’s enough.”

Michael smiles softly at him, leans forward to take it from him. The soft press of Michael’s lips against his doesn’t do anything to distract him from the sound of the packet being ripped open, he runs his hands restlessly along Michael’s legs.

Michael’s arm shifts which means he’s likely rolling the condom on and then he’s sliding into him, one long push and Alex breathes.

Hooks his hands over Michael’s arms and tries to pull him closer. Michael just rocks into him, never pulling all the way out, just rocking back and forth and Alex is probably making embarrassing noises.

He doesn’t care

 

********************************

 

They take a long leisurely shower together, just as the sun is peeking up. Michael on his knees in front of him so Alex can spend time running his fingers through hair, making sure the shampoo is nicely lathered.

They kiss lazily as the shower runs over them rinsing away shampoo and soap.

Alex aches for how much he loves him, he knows it’s impossible, but he wants to spend every day and every night like this. Just wrapped around each other.

Michael wraps a towel around his waist and stands behind Alex at the sink, hands resting lightly on his hips while Alex brushes his teeth and runs a towel over his hair.

He meets Michael’s eyes in the mirror and Michael has that faintly disbelieving look in his eyes, the one that screams that he’s pretty sure that Alex is a figment of his imagination and he’s passed out drunk in his trailer.

Alex hates every single person that made Michael think he wasn’t enough, he hates that not too long ago he could have counted himself in that group.

He turns his head and brushes his lips against Michael’s cheek. Reaches a hand up to press to the side of his head.

He hopes he’s making up for it now.

 

********************************

 

Surprisingly Michael takes longer to get ready in the morning then Alex does, Alex is still on military ten minutes or less in the bathroom schedules.

Even though he hasn’t had to share a bathroom for an extended period with more than three other people since basic and tech school.

He makes the coffee and then takes his cup out on the porch, sitting on the old swing that Jim had installed on the side and watching the sunrise.

Michael comes out with his own cup, though he sits it on the deck and curls up on the swing with his head in Alex’s lap. Alex runs fingers through his hair while he sits there and thinks of all the things he _could_ be doing.

But he doesn’t need to do those things right now, so he’ll sit here with Michael close and Mara still sleeping safely inside and drink his coffee and watch the sun come up.

 

********************************

 

Monday’s are always rough, it doesn’t matter if Alex loves what he does or not.

The start of a work week after having two days off where he just lazed around in jeans and t-shirts and watched as Mara and Michael bought more stuff for her room, which somehow transferred over to him and Michael ending up with new sheets, new curtains and another dresser for their room.

“So we need to watch some probably pretty horrific videos,” Sullivan greets him first thing Monday morning, Alex hasn’t even got his laptop out of his bag or opened his travel cup of coffee.

“Exactly the way I wanted to start my Monday off,” Alex sighs and waves Sullivan to the table. Canvers peers his head in, sees Sullivan already setting up at the table sighs loudly and ducks back out for a moment and returns with Barrows in tow.

“I feel like I shouldn’t need to do this, I already had to deal with the envelopes with the personal items in them,” Barrows is saying.

“You’re my backup man, when I have a nervous breakdown you need to know what I’ve been dealing with,” Canvers grumbles.

“What about when I have a nervous breakdown?” Barrows states.

“I’m scheduled for one next, so you’ll have to put it off,” Canvers says as he shuts the door behind them, locking it and then goes over to close the blinds.

“Don’t want Nasy to see any of this until we know what we’re dealing with,” he says when he sees Alex’s raised eyebrow.

“I figured we’d just watch a couple, go in date order,” Sullivan says, he already looks pale and Alex knows he’s probably already seen bits of pieces of the videos as he queued them up.

“Where’s that start us? With Jim Valenti’s videos or are there ones from Caulfield that predate his?” Alex asks as he takes a seat.

“It looks like someone scrubbed the ones that were in Valenti’s possession,” Canvers says for Sullivan, “they should have been on the servers at Caulfield but weren’t.”

“File names were all similar, at one point they had someone doing basic tech for them, I, uh couldn’t figure out who they were or what happened to them,” Sullivan frowns.

“Let’s not go down that rabbit hole right yet, we’ve got way too many others to investigate,” Alex advises.

“I only queued up four, I figured we could take a break after?” Sullivan asks, Alex nods and he starts the first one.

The first one is a shaky film of what looks like the original crash, Alex recognizes some of it from footage and pictures that are part of the official archives of Project Orion. The Antarian pilot is briefly shown, humanoid in shape, cropped hair, Alex could never tell from the original documents if it was a male or female; but he knows now from Nasy that the pilot was a female.

“Well that wasn’t too bad,” Barrows says, there’s a thread of optimism in his voice that Alex knows disappears as soon as the second video starts.

It’s the start of every alien horror movie, probably the start of nightmares that Michael, Max and Isobel had from when they were children.

The pilots’ eyes are open, she’s aware of what is happening to her as they slice into her belly, her _rounded_ belly. Nasy had never said the pilot was pregnant. He wonders if Nasy even knew.

Alex forces himself to take slow even breaths as they watch them remove the glowing cylindrical object. His brain isn’t processing things right, he’s sure of that, because it looks a lot like the object _inside_ the glowing cylinder is a fetus, barely formed.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Canvers swears next to him and when he glances over Barrows is staring at the screen his face frozen in a horrified expression, Sullivan has tears in his eyes.

“That’s enough for now,” Alex says reaching over to hit the button to stop the video. It freezes with the glowing fetus on the screen, he fumbles for the remote to turn the TV off.

“That’s... that was a fucking baby, sir,” Sullivan breathes.

“Yeah,” Alex runs a hand over his face, “yeah it is.”

A baby that they don’t know the current whereabouts of.

Or even if it’s still alive, Alex can’t imagine that if the baby is still in Project Shepherd hands that it had any better an upbringing then Alex had.

 

********************************

 

Alex books himself a visit with one of the therapists and lines up sessions for Canvers, Barrows and Sullivan right after.

He knows when he needs to talk to someone, it’s how they manage to do what they do. For all that they’re really good at their jobs… they’re all still human.

He makes his scheduled appointment with Evie because he doesn’t need to make her mad at him right now.

She pokes and prods him, takes his blood and looks approving of everything he’s done to minimize the damage he’d been trying to do to himself.

“So I guess you had a nice weekend then,” she says and he’s sure she can’t tell that the time he didn’t spend watching Mara and Michael bond was spent having sex with his boyfriend in the privacy of their own bedroom, but he still feels like he’s been caught out by a parent.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, he doesn’t shift or move his eye contact and she just grins at him.

“Barring whatever caused the sudden need for therapy you’re mostly nice and relaxed.”

“We had to start going through the video files,” he says, “Just when I think I’ve seen the worst of what humanity can do to each other, that nothing can surprise me anymore then I get to watch videos like the one I watched this morning.”

“Well just remember that _you_ aren’t one of those monsters,” she says gently.

“I thought I didn’t have therapy until 2.”

“Free of charge,” she says, closing his folder up, “and because sometimes I think you need the reminder.”

 

********************************


	9. Chapter 9

**Family Ties 9/?**

 

Nasy calls Canvers at some point to ask if he can take a day to make sure everyone is settled at the house and Canvers readily agrees because that means they won’t have to worry about Nasy knowing what they’re doing.

They should watch the rest of the videos, so they can archive them and be done with it, but they don’t. Alex should force the issue, or just watch them himself and not put any of his guys through any more emotional trauma.

But a baby…

There was a fucking baby.

Alex scours Jim’s documents, looking for anything that screams baby, child, infant, fetus… _anything_.

There’s nothing, and there’s no way Jim didn’t know. The video file in question was one of the ones that Jim had, Alex is sure he watched it.

At least he knows Sullivan isn’t having any more luck finding out what happened to the baby in Caulfield’s records.

“Maybe the baby is dead?” Sullivan asks, he scrubs his hands over his face.

“No, I think if the baby was dead we would have found some record of it,” Alex says.

“Yeah,” Sullivan sighs. “They really liked to document everything, so you would think they would document the baby. They documented the autopsy… though could it really be called an autopsy if she was alive up until they took her baby?”

“That wasn’t an autopsy, that was a murder.”

 

********************************

 

It finally dawns on Alex when it’s just about 1700 that he’s going to have to go home and sit down across from Michael and Mara and _not_ talk about his day.

He can’t actually talk about his day to day activities on most _given_ days but this… this is so far past what he’s _normally_ not able to talk about that he’s sure that both of them are going to be able to tell.

He just sits there with his hands over his face and breathes, in and out, counting steadily to fifty.

“Sir?” Sullivan asks quietly from the table where honestly he’d been working so quietly that Alex had forgotten that he was even there.

“You’d think at some point I’d be used to the fact that there’s a whole portion of my life that I don’t get to share with the people that I care about,” Alex says, he doesn’t lift his hands away from his face.

“Do you really want to share alien murder slash mystery baby we don’t know what happened to with anyone? I mean it doesn’t really strike me as good dinner conversation.”

“No, but every time I have to not tell Michael or Max or Isobel something, it feels like I’m lying to them.”

“I try not to think about it as lying,” Sullivan says. “I more like to think of it as making sure the people I care about don’t have the same nightmares I do.”

“Yeah,” Alex sighs, it still feels like lying, or withholding a truth that they should know though. “We’ll pick back up tomorrow, lets start running searches for abandoned infants, I can’t imagine anyone keeping a baby at Caulfield, so chances are they put it into the system somewhere where they could keep an eye on it.”

“It’s an alien baby though,” Sullivan reminds him, like he could have forgotten that fact. “Do you really think they would have given it up?”

“I think it was still a baby, it looked humanoid enough in the footage that I don’t think they could justify or stomach having experimented on it like they did with the adults.”

“Sir, I think you might be giving them the benefit of too much humanity.”

“Probably,” Alex admits, “but we have to start somewhere, and the records aren’t telling us anything so we’re going to hope they couldn’t actually torture the baby and gave it up. We’ll keep the search open on the date side just in case whatever science they had managed to figure out somehow translated into how to keep the fetus a fetus for an extended period of time.”

“That’s probably going to be a lot of data,” Sullivan says. “Do you want to start in just Roswell then expand out if we don’t get enough hits?”

“Yeah,” Alex says, “for now anyway.”

 

********************************

 

His week has just begun, he really hopes the remainder doesn’t go exactly like Monday did though. He’s not sure he can handle an _entire_ week of Mondays.

“Hey,” Michael is kicked back on the porch, Mara nowhere in sight and Alex puts his bag down and sits next to him.

“Hi,” Alex murmurs, leaning into his side, he lets his head rest on Michael’s shoulder and closes his eyes.

He needs to go change out of his uniform, needs to put his bag that he doesn’t plan on unpacking away, needs to eat something.

He doesn’t do any of that, he lets Michael wrap his arms around him, and turns his head for a kiss.

“I love you,” he says softly, because he feels like it’s imperative that Michael know this.

“I love you too.”

 

********************************

 

“I’m going to have Max look at my hand tomorrow,” Michael says later when they’re curled up together in their bed. “He probably can’t do anything, it’s been so long…”

Alex leans forward and kisses him, cups his hand over the side of his face holding him there.

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” he says softly. “If Max can’t do anything then we get Tahl to look at it.”

Michael shrugs, like it’s not important to him but Alex can tell, can see just the barest hint of _hope_ in his eyes.

“I don’t want to get my hopes up,” he admits quietly, Alex can feel the fingers of Michael’s damaged hand flexing against his hip.

“Then I’ll get my hopes up for you,” Alex says, he has a guitar in storage, he’s sure the one that Michael played on back in high school is still in a box at his dad’s.

“Power of positive thinking?” Michael asks wryly and Alex laughs at him, leans in to kiss him again. Just luxuriating in the feel of Michael’s mouth moving against his, his hands pressing into the bare skin of his back, creeping into the back of his shorts and holding him close.

“Power of positive thinking.”

 

********************************

 

“So Michael is texting me about a barbecue this weekend?” Canvers appears in his doorway with cellphone in hand about twenty minutes after Alex has already gotten set up at his desk and managed two whole sips of his coffee with no interruptions.

“Are you running late this morning?”

Canvers rolls his eyes at him and waits expectantly.

“Apparently it’s a combination thank you for rescuing us and belated housewarming,” Alex shrugs. He knows just the basics of whatever Isobel, Maria and Liz are putting together. “Just give Michael an idea of how many people so he can figure out chicken and sides.”

“I think everyone is in town, I’ll look at the duty roster but Barrows and I weren’t planning on manning during the weekend, not while we don’t have any active missions in sight. You sure you want that many people at your place?”

“I’m not sure I was given any choice in the matter, it’ll be nice to have everyone officially meet without the homicidal shifter in attendance.”

 

********************************

 

He closes off his office at 1300 so he, Canvers and Sullivan can bulldoze through the video’s.

“I sneak peaked them,” Sullivan says with a grim white face. “There’s twenty total videos, but no more alien murders, just the basic physical and psychological torture.”

“That does not actually make me feel any better,” Canvers mutters.

Sullivan has the twenty videos set to autorun one after the other, the longest is ten minutes. Only two of the videos have people that Alex recognizes, one is Tahl and the video is of an older Jim Valenti being strong armed into Tahl’s cell.

Alex can see Tahl trying not to actually touch Jim, he already knows that he’s a danger and the absolute panic on his face as he finally has to put his hands up to keep Jim from being pushed directly onto him is heartbreaking.

The other is of Mara and the clip is thankfully only 90 seconds long, the audio quality is complete shit, they can’t hear what the soldier in her cell was demanding but he knows whatever it was, whatever Mara shook her head no for and denied them… she didn’t deserve the three hard blows that brought her to her knees.

He breathes as the clip moves onto some other atrocity being committed against being that didn’t deserve it.

When the last video plays Sullivan crosses himself and Canvers bows his head.

“That’s twenty-two videos total, right?” Alex asks slowly.

“Yes sir,” Sullivan says.

“And we don’t think there’s any more hidden in a sub directory that we haven’t managed to unlock?”

“There’s a few folders I haven’t finished searching through but there didn’t appear to be any video files, just documents and images.”

“What about the system we took from my father’s bunker?”

“Lieutenant Davies had his guys doing a cursory search of the actual Project Shepherd data files, do you want me to reach out to them and see if they’ve found anything different then what we’ve managed to locate?”

“Yes, just to be on the safe side. Twenty-two files, one is the crash, one the pilot and there’s only two of these that have people I recognize.”

“Tahl and Mara,” Canvers says quietly. “The rest of them weren’t among the survivors.”

“Eighteen that were killed or…” Sullivan looks sickened by the idea.

“At a completely different facility, because Barrows only had nine envelopes which possibly still leaves nine unaccounted for.”

“Which means we’re looking for another facility, there’s another Caulfield out there somewhere,” Alex says grimly. Which means more digging through Jim’s files and probably finally taking the giant leap down the dark side of the web.

 

********************************

 

Alex doesn’t think on the drive home. He just turns the radio up and turns his brain off. He needs to not be thinking about horrible videos when he walks into the cabin and sees Michael and Mara.

When he pulls up his driveway he sees Max’s car parked right next to Michael’s truck, another car right next to it that he can’t immediately place.

He figures it’s probably Perkins’ since she comes around the front of the cabin and stands there in civvies waiting for him to park and get out of his vehicle.

“Nasy wanted me to bring him and Tahl out,” she says by way of explanation when he climbs the steps.

“Doesn’t Canvers normally play chauffer for him?”

“Apparently he wasn’t answering his phone,” Perkins shrugs. “I wasn’t doing anything important besides trying to talk myself out of takeout so…”

When they walk into the cabin they’re all bunched around the kitchen table with Michael and Max in the center and Mara hovering at Michael’s shoulder.

“Good you’re here,” Nasy says brightly. “Michael wouldn’t let them start until you got here.”

Michael has his injured hand on the table and Alex can tell that he really doesn’t want to do this, his other hand is clenching and unclenching, his eyes are wide and he’s probably about 30 seconds from his flight or fight reflex kicking in.

Alex sits in the empty chair next to him and Michael grabs for his hand, squeezing tightly and Alex just leans into his side, resting his cheek against Michael’s shoulder and watching.

“It’s probably been too long,” Michael mutters, “but mom said I should at least let you try.”

“Nonsense,” Tahl brushes off, “this is nothing compared to some injuries I’ve seen.”

Alex looks at Max and thinks he doesn’t look as positive as Tahl sounds and looks.

“Just lay your hand,” Tahl says, moving Max’s hands so they sandwich Michael’s between them. He lays his hand on top and presses down slightly and Michael twitches in discomfort though he doesn’t make a sound.

Mara presses her hand to the back of Michael’s neck, resting her head on top of his and makes soothing noises for distress that Michael hasn’t actually shown.

“Just concentrate,” Tahl says softly, his hand still laying on top of Max’s. “Not too much power or you’ll make yourself sick, the bones and skin and muscle all know where they’re supposed to be you’re just prodding them back into position,” his voice is soothing, and Alex can feel Perkins at his shoulder watching with him as Max and Tahl’s hands start glowing lightly.

Michael makes a noise and squeezes his hand hard for a second, Alex just squeezes back to let him know that he’s there, then Michael makes another noise that sounds like disbelief.

“That should be good,” Tahl says as he lifts his hand away, Max following suit. He looks slightly winded, like maybe he’d just finished a mad sprint, but he also seems amazed when he looks down at where Michael’s hand, which had been horribly misshapen because of Alex’s father is now laying there _not_.

Michael just stares at it, like it’s not actually attached to his arm and he only moves when Alex squeezes his hand again. He flexes the hand laying across the table, and they all watch as his hand curls into a fist, then straightens out his fingers one by one so they lie flat.

He turns to Alex and the absolute wonder in his eyes as he lifts that hand to draw soft fingers down the side of his face is something to behold. Alex turns his head to press a kiss to the palm of that hand and smiles at him.

“I think I might have the guitar still in storage.”

 

********************************

  



	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am out of town next week, so there will be no new chapter on Friday. Instead the next chapter will be uploaded on Sunday (then the next chapter of Moving Forward on Monday), and then back to regular posting schedule for Family Ties on Friday. Thank!
> 
> Also shorter then usual - as the next chapter is a doozy and I didn't want to leave you with a cliffhanger. :D

**Family Ties 10/?**

 

“I have seventy-two infants abandoned at either the hospital or churches from 1947 to 1994,” Sullivan announces from Alex’s doorway, he’s got his laptop under his arm and looks frazzled.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” Alex asks, waving him in. “You know this isn’t a race, right? We’re not on a time crunch.”

“Yeah, but baby,” Sullivan says, shutting the door behind him. “I kind of want to know what happened to it.”

“Chances are if they gave the baby up that Project Shepherd was also keeping an eye on it just in case; we just need to figure out where they were or are documenting that information.”

He glances over the list of dates that Sullivan and one date jumps out at him and he glances up at Sullivan sharply.

“You were a cute baby, sir,” Sullivan says brightly. “And I was all star-crossed lovers and fate and how better to keep an eye on an alien baby then to put it in the same house as the guy that’s running the illegal operation in the first place but then I did some digging and you look exactly like your brothers so…” Sullivan shrugs and doesn’t make eye contact.

“I’m not an alien Sullivan,” Alex says with a laugh. “I don’t turn on any of the tech or…”

“Yeah I thought about that too, and if it _was_ you I’m sure Sergeant Manes would have figured out some way to keep you depowered and everything, but then I thought you went into the military which meant you weren’t in his direct control so anything he was drugging you with would have worn off and if you _had_ been an alien then likely things in Afghanistan wouldn’t have gone to shit so fast.”

Alex raises an eyebrow at him and Sullivan shrugs, “I had a whole timeline written for it but when it came down to it I couldn’t actually make reality fit the timeline so…”

“You’re not too far off, the baby would likely have been placed with someone my grandfather or my dad trusted.”

“Probably your dad,” Sullivan turns his laptop slightly, so Alex can see the screen, there’s a police report for an abandoned infant showing up in the emergency room. “His name is Andrew Diaz, he was abandoned at the hospital the same day you were born, ended up being placed with then adopted by a military family, I haven’t done the deep, deep dive yet but a cursory search shows the dad having been stationed at two of the same bases your dad was. And I only had to dig back to the year you were born, and baby Andy was abandoned to find the TDY orders tying him to Project Shepherd.”

“Signed by General Anders?”

“Yeah, do we even have a clue who this General is?” Sullivan asks.

“No, our General is still digging into it, he’ll set one of our teams on it at some point I’m sure.” Once he’s dug as far as he can dig. Alex has already put feelers out to see if he can find anything.

“What do we know about Andrew Diaz?” he asks.

“Not a damn thing, he’s a ghost. Guy never even had a driver’s license that I can find, I can’t find school records, doctors records, nothing, no digital footprint _at all_. As far as I can see the baby left the hospital with the Diaz’s and two years later they’re out of New Mexico and no Andy.”

“What about the dad?”

“Sergeant Diaz died back in 2001, massive heart attack, dead on arrival.”

“Jesus.”

“Seventy-two infants, and he’s the only one that I can’t find any trace of,” Sullivan says. “Canvers says to trust my gut, and it’s just plain weird that he shows up at the hospital the same day you’re born. I’ve got files for all the rest if you want to go through them, but I really think this is our mystery baby.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Alex says tapping his fingers on the table top.

“This is just way too freaky to be a coincidence.”

 

********************************

 

“So where do we stand?” the General asks during their next video chat, the rest of the team leaders have already given their updates and signed off. It’s just Alex, Lieutenant Davies and the General now.

“I’m told that that computer system taken from Sergeant Manes’ bunker is complete crap and we’ve found a couple of video files but nothing different then what you’ve already identified,” Davies says, his lips twist into a moue of disgust, Alex makes a mental note to find out exactly which video files Davies and his team had found.

“We believe we’re looking for another facility like Caulfield,” Alex says and the General scowls. “We’re still picking apart the data from Caulfield and Jim Valenti but so far we’ve got nothing, we might need to…”

“You’re not talking to Sergeant Manes,” the General says sharply. “The conflict of interest issue aside, I’d like the man alive and breathing to stand up for his crimes and I think you’ve got a very short fuse where the man is concerned.”

Alex doesn’t disagree with him, because he does.

He looks at Mara and all he can see is the years of torture and abuse that she suffered because of his family. He’s not sure how she can even stand to look at him knowing what his dad and his grandfather did to her and her people.

Except his therapists keep telling him that he is not responsible for other people actions, and that probably includes his family.

“He could have valuable information,” Alex pushes.

“And someone will talk to him,” the General nods.

“My boys and I can do it,” Davies offers. “We can also take point on finishing the debrief on the rest of the guys brought in from Caulfield too, I give them too much time off they’re going to start asking for vacation days.”

“Good, make sure to copy Captain Manes and myself on anything of note, if we end up getting multiple locations we’ll likely need to mobilize everyone,” the General muses, “don’t want to give the rats too much time to scurry back into their holes.” He leans back in his chair and Alex can’t tell from the video call if he’s focusing on him or Davies or both of them, probably both of them.

“We’re ready for whatever,” Alex says and Davies nods his agreement.

“Boys are actually getting a little bored, would be nice to get back into the field.”

 

********************************

Davies e-mails him to see if he has twenty minutes free in the afternoon for a video chat and Alex doesn’t really have _any_ time but something about the tone of the e-mail seems weird, so he makes time and sends him a good to go.

“Your dad was _really_ not a fan of your Mr. Geurin,” Davies says by way of opening and it’s been maybe two hours since their video conference with the General, so Alex raises an eyebrow and waits for elaboration.

Davies and his boys haven’t had nearly enough time to get into a room with his dad and his dads lawyers yet. So this is likely something else.

Davies flashes a picture across the screen and it’s a background history report that Alex hasn’t ever seen before for Michael, with a Terrorist Threat Level of red and Alex’s heart is in his fucking throat.

“What the fuck?” he swears.

“It’s not real,” Davies rushes to assure him, “quick glance it looks real, but you actually _look_ at it and doctored as hell. Your dad had it all ready in his files to use though which is kind of terrifying, not sure what his actual end plan was but Jesus what did this kid ever do to him?”

“A level red is shoot to kill,” Alex says numbly, and he doesn’t tell Davies that all Michael did was try to protect him, he’s too busy remembering threats and innuendoes that he never thought his father would ever follow through on.

Of course, he never thought his father would ever assault a seventeen-year-old kid that wasn’t him either and though Michael’s hand is healed now, he spent ten years dealing with the damage that his father inflicted on him.

 

********************************

 

“Is this your new favorite spot?” Alex asks when he gets home and finds Michael kicked back on the porch again.

He’s safe and relaxed, he could just as easily not be.

“I like watching you come home,” Michael grins and lays his arm over the back of the swing, he leers at him a little bit and Alex laughs but sits down next to him. Michael pulls him in and Alex lays his head on his shoulder and stares off into the tree line.

Michael keeps them swinging lightly back and forth with what Alex assumes is his powers since his feet don’t seem to be on the ground.

“I should change,” he mumbles and Michael curls his arms around him as if to keep him in place.

“In a bit,” Michael murmurs, he lays his cheek against Alex’s forehead and the swing sways gently.

 

********************************

 

Dinner is quiet, Mara had evidently gone off to the house to hang out with the rest of the Caulfield survivors.

“I think they had therapy or something,” Michael says as they’re cleaning up. Alex is washing the dinner dishes, Michael drying and putting them away because he doesn’t like letting them just hang out on the counter until they need them again.

He was never this much of a neat freak at the Airstream and Alex would question it but doesn’t.

“This is home,” Michael says even though Alex didn’t say a word; he hangs the towel up on the little hook and then comes to stand right behind Alex, arms coming around him, fingers pressing into Alex’s stomach. Resting his chin on his shoulder and holding him.

Alex twists in his arms and tucks his fingers into the back of Michael’s jeans, smiling at him as Michael smiles back.

“I had dreams like this,” Alex says softly, “in basic when things were shit, I used to dream about the day I’d be strong enough to tell my dad to fuck off and he’d not have any power or control to stop me.”

“He _doesn’t_ have any control over us,” Michael says. “He never did, he never will again.”

Alex shakes his head, because Michael doesn’t know the lengths his dad went to in order to make sure that Alex didn’t have any contact with him.

He doesn’t know about being labeled a terrorist, he doesn’t know about the things his father threatened to do if Alex so much as _thought_ about seeing Michael.

“Every time I thought about coming home, it was like he _knew_. He’d send me a message with pictures of where you were, who you were with and it was like… you were _here_ in this town with _him_ and I couldn’t protect you. I did the only thing I could, I stayed away and if I stayed away he didn’t have any reason to go after you.”

Michael just looks at him and there’s heartbreak and loneliness in his eyes, Alex hates it. Michael cradles his face in his hands, his two good hands that he should have always had.

“You don’t need to protect me, you never _needed_ to protect me,” he says and Alex shakes his head again, because keeping Michael safe was the only point.

“He would have made it look like an accident,” he says. “And I couldn’t bear… if I wasn’t here, if I stayed away then you were alive and safe and happy and maybe you got to have a chance to have a future that didn’t have my dad dogging your footsteps the entire way.”

“ _You_ are my future,” Michael says firmly. He kisses him and Alex kisses back, holds tight to him and lets Michael press him against the counter.

Michael’s right, now. But back then he would have been wrong, and he couldn’t have allowed Michael to be a casualty in his war with his father.

Not anymore then he already was.

 

********************************

  



	11. Chapter 11

**Family Ties 11/?**

 

He wakes well before his alarm, it’s still dark out and Michael is spooned up tight behind him arms wrapped around him holding him close.

He’s hard and Alex thinks it wouldn’t take much maneuvering to get him into a position where he could slide inside him.

“I can hear you thinking, it’s dark, go back to sleep,” Michael mutters against his neck, arms tightening just a fraction more around him. Alex grinds back in response and Michael muffles a moan against Alex’s skin.

Alex reaches a hand out to snag the bottle of lube from the nightstand and it’s snatched from his hands, the dark hides his smiles as Michael grumbles nonsense that doesn’t hide the click of the bottle opening.

He nudges at Alex’s hip with the palm of his hand and Alex tips forward a bit to give him easier access, he can feel Michael’s hand nudge up against him, a finger pressing in, then two then the blunt pressure of Michael pushing into him. He breathes, wraps a hand around himself and closes his eyes as Michael moves against him.

It’s lazy, quiet and he’s in no rush, they’ve got time.

 

********************************

 

He’d had a great start to his morning, so the universe does her level best to make sure Alex stays on his five remaining toes.

“I could have sworn…” Michael is muttering, they seem to be out of coffee, the container Alex keeps in the refrigerator isn’t there and his spare is not in the cupboard. He likes his coffee but he doesn’t like it _that_ much.

“I’ll just stop on my way,” Alex says and he busses a kiss against Michael’s cheek and heads out the door, stopped in his tracks by Michael looping arms around him at the door.

“I want a better kiss then that,” Michael says and Alex turns in his arms with a smile. Michael cups his face in his hands and Alex smiles into the kiss.

“Alright, I’m going to be late if you keep that up,” Alex mumbles as Michael tries to press him up against the door.

Michael laughs at him and Alex pushes his fingers into his hair and tugs gently as he kisses him again.

 

********************************

 

He’s not a fan of gas station coffee but needs must. He hazards a sip and makes a face, it always has a frankly awful burnt old after taste, he should have just waited until he got to base and drank some of Barrows’ coffee that could easily masquerade as jet fuel.

“Are you Alex Manes?” he hears from behind him and he doesn’t recognize the voice but he’s instantly on alert. Every molecule of his body feeling like it needs to shove over to defense mode and he grips his keys in his hand and sets the coffee on the roof of his vehicle while he turns.

It’s a young man, probably about his age. Skin the same shade as his, jet black hair, dark eyes.

“Can I help you?” Alex says, Canvers laments the fact that Alex doesn’t seem to really have a flight reflex, only fight.

Always fight.

The young man’s lips curve into a smile at the sight of his tag on his uniform and Alex’s eyes narrow.

The young man pushes forward, and Alex gets his hand out, key digging into the man’s arm, it doesn’t do much but cause him to hiss and Alex jolts at the press of a taser against his side, struggles to keep himself on his feet as he hears someone shout behind them.

He presses the alert button on his key fob, the one that’s linked to his phone, the one that will send an SOS to Sullivan and whoever else is monitoring their security systems this morning.

He doesn’t pass out, he’s made of hardier stuff then that, but he’s definitely not steady on his feet and his vision is doing the hazy dotty thing and his mind is racing. The man makes a sound of annoyance, then slams his head down on the side of his car.

The young man gets his hands under his arms and Alex knows he has to be dead weight, but this guy moves him as easily as if he weights next to nothing.

“Sorry man,” he says as he maneuvers him into the backseat of the car parked right next to his, Alex can’t really focus on anything but trying to stay awake and not give him the benefit of passing out. But he thinks the guy _does_ look slightly remorseful as he brings something hard down on the side of head.

 

********************************

 

He’s in a cave when things come back into focus, he lays there for a moment taking stock of his current situation. He’s flat on his back and has what feels like a boulder poking into the back of his leg and his ass. His head is aching, and his leg is throbbing, his entire body feels like it’s been put through the wringer. He’s not restrained so he takes a moment to breathe, get his bearings and then rolls to his side.

There’s a pod in the center of the cave, it’s illuminated which means it still has power. He wonders if there’s pods hidden through the entire cave system in Roswell.

“Sorry about the taser, and you know hitting you and stuff,” the guy appears in his line of vision and Alex doesn’t jump because honestly, he’s in too much pain to worry about this asshole.

The guy holds out a bottle of water and he looks… he looks fucking so apologetic about kidnapping him that Alex has about two seconds where he thinks about apologizing to _him_.

He doesn’t.

“Where are we?” he asks instead, he takes the bottle of water because he thinks the guy will just continue standing there waiting for him to take it.

He doesn’t drink it, even though he can see the seal hasn’t been broken.

“There’s caves all around Roswell,” the guy says, he stands there awkwardly, like he’s not sure what to do now that he has assaulted and abducted Alex from a gas station 15 minutes from his base where likely his entire team is currently losing their shit and activating all the electronic tags on his person and uniform that they think he doesn’t know about.

Alex just breathes.

“I’ve got some Excedrin if you need some, but I might have given you a concussion, sometimes I don’t know my own strength,” the guy shrugs and looks sheepish. Alex really doesn’t want to like him.

“Do you have a name?” Alex asks as he uses the wall of the cave to get himself to his feet. At least the prosthetic is still in place, whatever else this guy did he didn’t manage to dislodge it or fuck it up. Alex could likely still run if the cave would stop spinning in circles.

“I’m Andy,” he waves at him and Alex just blinks at him. “Andy Diaz? We used to hang out when we were kids, you, me and Kyle?”

“I’m sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else? I don’t know you,” Alex says carefully and Andy winces again.

“Yeah,” his face twists and he runs fingers through his hair and glances over at the pod then back at Alex. “We came back for a couple months at the beginning of senior year and it was all kind of shitty, I might have…” he waggles his fingers in the direction of Alex’s head and Alex thinks he might have actually stopped breathing there for a few seconds, he clenches his hands at his side and forces himself to take short even breaths.

“You’ve been in my head,” Alex says and he remembers long ago arguments where Nasy was insisting someone had been in his mind and holes that had been left behind and Alex insisting that there was no one or nothing missing so he had to be wrong.

“Just to take me out, and you know all the alien stuff I kind of dragged you into,” Andy says insistently, “I was protecting you, if your dad knew he would have…”

Alex doesn’t believe this was anything about protecting him, he thinks Andy was protecting himself and by extension it protected Alex.

He tries not to think about the fact that there was something alien that Andy managed to drag him into, he’s trying to figure out how much time and what exactly Andy had removed.

But those are likely topics for another day.

Plus there’s an active pod in the center of the cave that takes precedence over whatever childhood teenage bullshit that is almost eleven years in the past.

“Why are we here?” he asks and walks slowly towards the pod, he knows it’s not Andy’s. He’s seen Andy being taken from his mother, if Andy is indeed the baby that had been removed from the pilot… though there’s always the option that Andy is the off spring of another alien they hadn’t known about.

“I need help, the pod is malfunctioning and if it dies then she dies too,” Andy says moving to stand beside him, Alex just looks at him then looks down at the pod, then looks back at Andy because what the fuck?

“Rosa Ortecho is already dead,” Alex says carefully, because she is. She’s been dead for over 10 years.

“No, no,” Andy says. “No, I saved her,” he presses his hand against the curve of the glass. “She wasn’t dead, not really.”

“They did an autopsy,” Alex says slowly, “they buried her, I was _at_ her funeral.”

“She’s _not dead_ ,” Andy snarls, “I saved her,” he says grabbing at his arm and Alex has had enough of this shit. He twists his wrist and grabs Andy’s arm, sweeps his legs out from under him and then puts the entire weight of his body down on his chest.

“Don’t move,” Alex snaps. Andy struggles under him and Alex waits, thinks through his options.

“You couldn’t even wait for us?” Canvers steps into sight, weapon drawn. McDonald and Farrell coming up behind him and then around him. Andy just sort of collapses and Alex doesn’t look down at him, he sounds like he’s crying. “Don’t take this the wrong way sir, but you make a lousy damsel in distress, you know you’re supposed to wait for prince charming to show up to rescue you.”

“That’s because I’m not a fucking damsel in distress and you’re certainly not prince charming,” Alex states. “You should know this by now.”

 

********************************

  



	12. Chapter 12

**Family Ties 12/?**

 

McDonald zip ties Andy’s wrists behind him and is not quite gentle when he prods the man out of the cave leaving Canvers, Farrell and Alex standing there staring at the pod.

“So I guess I’ll ask the hundred dollar question… who’s the chick?” Farrell finally asks.

“Rosa Ortecho,” Alex says and lets out a breath then leans forward so he can get a closer at the control panel. He’s trying not to think about how he’s going to explain this to Liz.

“Uh sir, I read Ms. Ortecho’s background report, her sister died like almost eleven years ago now,” Canvers says slowly, Alex doesn’t look back at him.

“Yeah, I know, I was there when they buried her, but this is Rosa or some heretofore unknown to me twin and the pod is registering life signs so…” Alex shrugs, then winces.

His head is killing him, he should have made Andy at least tell them where the Excedrin was before McDonald took him out. Not that he would have trusted it, but it would have been nice to have the option.

“Right then, Farrell let’s get everyone in here so we can get the pod back to base, we can let Nasy poke around for a bit and tell us if opening it and waking her up will resulting her dying or if there’s something else we need to be doing.”

Alex uses the pod to get himself straightened out and when he turns Farrell has his phone out and is making a face at it. Likely no cell service in the cave system he’s going to have to go out the cave to summon the others that Alex is sure have taken up positions of defense.

“And what are you going to be doing sir?” Farrell asks as he turns to go find some not dead space.

“The Captain is going to sit in a corner and wait patiently while we do all that,” Canvers says firmly.

“I am, am I?”

“Yep, because I’ve hit my max stress level already today sir, so you sit over there and breathe and concentrate on _not_ having a concussion or internal bleeding and I won’t make you go to your office by yourself when we get back.”

“Michael is waiting is in my office, isn’t he?”

“Michael, his mom, what feels like _every single person_ you’ve ever met that aren’t us.”

 

********************************

 

“And you always tell us that the bugs are all over kill,” Perkins leans forward between the seats as they’re driving back to base.

“They are, the key fob would have sent the alert where it needed to go,” Alex says, he has his eyes closed and is breathing through his nose. Concentrating very intently on anything that is not his stomach rolling uncomfortably.

“True, but the bug in your _prosthetic_ actually allowed us to pin point your location, since asshat back there left your phone in your car,” Perkins says, waving her hand in the direction of the truck behind them that Barrows is driving with McDonald armed and Andy Diaz still in restraints.

“And yet it still took eight hours for you to get out to me,” Alex says.

“That was more fighting the General, he wanted us to wait and see if whoever took you opened up a line of communication, when they didn’t he wanted to send another team in to go after you. Because you know conflict of interest and we were too close to the situation. _Then_ we had to actually narrow down where you were, Sullivan is going to want to look at the design of the bug in your prosthetic because it gave us a fairly general location of where you were but didn’t actually give us on the dot location.”

“How many caves did you burst into with guns out?”

“Fifteen, it’s why there was only McDonald and Farrell with Sergeant Canvers when they actually found you, we were rotating because scaling those rocks was only fun the first five or so times, after that we traded off.”

“Do we need to start a physical fitness program back up? We haven’t done any real physical training since before Kuwait.”

 

 

********************************

 

“Mild concussion,” Evie says, she doesn’t flash her light in his eyes, just presses at the gashes and his new bruises. “How’s your leg?”

“Hurts a bit, nothing I can’t handle for a couple more hours.”

“I’ll get one of your team to gather up some crutches for you,” Evie pats his hand and smiles at him. “For now I think there’s some people waiting in your office to make sure you’re okay.”

Canvers leads the way to his office and he can hear the low hum of voices before he even gets within ten feet of the door. He contemplates turning around and going to sit in on the questioning of Andy but instead he reminds himself he’s an adult who can take care of himself, rolls his shoulders and walks into his office.

Michael grabs onto him the second he enters, arms wrapping tightly around him, almost _too_ tightly though Alex will never complain about Michael holding him.

He just wraps his arms around him in return and tilts their foreheads together.

The others settle for pats on the arm and back except for when Mara approaches and Michael allows his arms to loosen so that Mara can hug him just as tightly as her son did.

“I’m okay,” he murmurs against her cheek. He holds out a hand to Michael who grips it and then presses his lips against his knuckles.

When Michael finally pulls him down on the couch, placing him firmly between him and his mom, Kyle approaches, bag already out and proceeds to check him out while the others talk around him.

“Mild concussion,” Kyle finally says.

“Doctors already told me that,” Alex says, he’s exhausted, he would love nothing more then to lay his head on Michael’s shoulder and let him shelter him under his arm and sleep.

But there’s too much to do.

And the mild concussion means that there is likely to be little to no sleep in his immediate future.

There’s also a pod in the bay now with Rosa Ortecho in it and she may or may not be alive. There’s Liz standing there leaning into Max who has no idea that her older sister might still be alive.

There’s Andy Diaz sitting confined to a room, likely in cuffs at a table waiting for someone to ask questions of him.

“Andy Diaz,” he says and Kyle looks at him with a furrowed brow and a look of confusion. “Do you know that name?”

“No? Should I?” Kyle asks.

“The guy who grabbed me, he says he knew us, when we were kids,” Alex says.

“I don’t know anyone by that name, up until like fifth grade it was just you and me,” Kyle shakes his head, “then we got Liz and Maria and… Rosa.”

“The name sounds familiar though,” Maria says from where she’s perched next to Liz, Alex looks over at her and she looks thoughtful and Liz is nodding her head like she agrees with Maria. As are Max and Michael next to him.

“Nasy told me once that I had holes in my memory, it was his idea of proof that I had come into contact with aliens before, I’d like him to sit down with both of us and see if the holes in my memory match up to any holes you might have in yours.”

“You think we knew this guy and he what? Took out our memories of him?”

“That’s what he says, we just need to prove or disprove it.”

 

********************************

 

“So what do we know?” Alex asks.

They’re in the secure part of the facility and if Alex looks he can see the pod that Andy had Rosa in sitting in the bay with the pods that housed Michael, Max and Isobel.

“She’s alive,” Nasy says.

“She’s human, right?” Alex asks in confusion, exchanging a look with Canvers. “I mean I grew up with her and Liz and their family is human, Antarian technology doesn’t work on us.”

“100% human, I have no clue how he managed to get into the subprograms and alter the programming, so it would work with her physiology. It’s ingenious really, I wish he wasn’t absolutely crazy because we could totally put skills like that to use in R&D,” Nasy says.

“So what’s our game plan?” Canvers asks. “Do we need to have a discussion with Ms. Ortecho and her family on how her sister came to be among the living again?”

Alex taps his fingers against the report Nasy had compiled for them.

“Sullivan dig and see if you can figure out how or when he managed to take ownership of her.”

“On it sir,” Alex trusts that Sullivan is likely already doing something like that.

“We also need to figure out where the pod came from.”

“Ebay, dark web,” Barrows shrugs, “Craigslist?”

“She was dead, Nasy. We need to understand what he did to make her undead.”

“All Antarians have an ability of some sort, if he was a healer… if he figured out a way to power himself up he could have healed her of…”

“Of being dead?” Alex asks with an arched brow and Nasy winces. “I feel like this is something that probably should have come up as a possibility before now.”

Barrows groans, “I feel like this is the beginning of like a half dozen zombie movies and would just like to remind everyone to shoot twice ask questions later.”

 

********************************

 

“So I just need you to breathe,” Nasy says, he’s staring intently at Kyle and Kyle is looking half as if he’s going to bolt from the chair and the room and possibly Roswell, and probably already would have if Max wasn’t sitting right to him.

Body tilted toward him, hand on the back of Kyle’s chair but not touching him.

“Right,” Kyle says.

“And try to relax,” Nasy offers, he glances at Alex.

“We’re just looking to see if there are holes in his memory that match up with the holes you say are in mine,” Alex say.

Kyle stiffens slightly when Nasy makes contact, Max’s hand brushes against his shoulder and Kyle relaxes. Alex exchanges a look with Michael who just shrugs.

“You are correct, he has many of the same holes in his memory,” Nasy murmurs, “most of them from childhood, there’s whole blocks of time missing. Some from later, and he maybe took a little more out of your mind then he took out of Mr. Valenti’s but the time frames match up for the most part.”

“What could he even have taken out?” Kyle asks, Max’s hand moves up to touch the back of his neck and Kyle’s turns to look at him.

“From the little bit he disclosed when he took me, I guess we’re going to be led to believe that at some point in our childhood we figured out aliens were real and likely that Andy was one of them. He _says_ he took out the memories to protect us.”

“More like protect himself,” Michael snorts.

“Well he did an awful job, but if he was a child himself it would explain it,” Alex and Kyle look at him in confusion.

“There’s whole blocks missing, if he were a trained mind healer he would have taken just a few key events and allowed your memories to link back together naturally. By taking as much as he did…” Nasy shakes his head. “There is no way your dads didn’t notice that something was amiss.”

“So how do we get them back?” Kyle asks, Nasy frowns.

“You don’t, you can’t,” Nasy says and Alex frowns, because that’s not exactly the truth and from the way that Nasy doesn’t meet his eyes he _knows_ that Alex knows that’s not true.

But then the only way to get to those memories would be to go into Andy Diaz’s head and Alex isn’t quite sure he trusts anything in his head so maybe he can kind of see why Nasy isn’t opening that up as an option.

********************************

  



	13. Chapter 13

**Family Ties 13/?**

 

Sullivan has already hooked their tech up to the pod when he gets there, the pod is functional and talking which is nice. Alex looks over the readings coming through, all indicating that Rosa Ortecho is alive and breathing within it.

She looks the same as he remembers, though when they wake her not a single one of them looks the same as what she’ll remember.

“Should we do a DNA test or something?” Barrows asks, he’s making notations in a file. Alex raises an eyebrow at him and he shrugs. “Just to make sure it’s really her, it’d be a bad thing to tell her sister and figure out way to tell her father then find out she’s someone else entirely, or a shape shifter or something.”

It’s not a bad idea, though Alex can feel in his gut the truth that this is Rosa.

He can’t put, ‘my gut told me so’ on a report though.

“Yeah, go ahead,” he rubs at his forehead and sighs.

“I think it’s just about time for pain killers,” Barrows says, glancing at his watch then studying Alex’s face.

“Do you all have me on a schedule or something?”

“Canvers set up a group chat, he also says you should eat something as well because the one pill requires food.”

 

********************************

 

He’s making his way slowly, one limping step at a time to his office, he’s excited for a few minutes of prospective quiet. But then he notices that the blinds on his office are drawn though the door is still cracked.

Normally the blinds being drawn is his sign that he’s in a video conference with the General but the door is cracked and he’s not in his office so that’s not what they currently mean.

“You’re going to give yourself another nose bleed,” Max is saying, when he peers in he can see Kyle and Max sitting in chairs facing each other. Max is touching Kyle’s head, fingers pressed to his temples and Kyle’s eyes are closed.

“How can they just be gone? The brain has ways of protecting itself, they can’t all just be gone,” Kyle mutters, “And why just us, you all remember him, why just Alex and me?”

“Because he was friends with you two,” Liz says, she perches on the corner of Kyle’s chair, arm going over his shoulder and leaning into him. Kyle’s arm goes around her waist, the other reaches up to take one of Max’s hands within his own, linking their fingers together.

Alex taps on the door to alert them that he’s there and allow them the opportunity to separate if they want.

He’s not sure if whatever the three of them are doing is common knowledge, but when he pushes the door open Kyle is still in the chair, Max is still across from him, their fingers are still linked together laying across Kyle’s leg and Liz is still perched in the same position.

He’s too tired to really care.

“You look exhausted,” Liz says.

“It’s been a very long day,” Alex says as he goes around to the other side of his desk.

He needs to call the General, he needs to file a report on the day’s activities (stressing how he _is not_ to blame for the abduction) and then he needs to start another report on what Andy Diaz has done to him and Kyle.

Then he needs to come up with some sort of game plan on how to tell Liz about Rosa and he needs to determine a re-entry plan for Rosa for when they remove her from the pod which he likely will need Liz’s assistance with.

There is a large list of things that he needs to do but he stares blankly at his monitor, fingers hovering over his keyboard before he covers his face with his hands and just breathes.

He’s shaking, he’s not sure why and he must lose time because when he’s finally aware again Kyle is kneeling next to him with his fingers pressed to his wrist and Michael is at the door looking scared.

“I think you need to go home,” Kyle says when Alex blinks at him. “Sleep, eat something, be somewhere not here where someone is sure to come through that door needing you to be the Captain.”

“You’re not my doctor,” Alex says, just as Canvers skirts around Michael to enter the room.

“Captain I need you to…”

“I’m taking him home,” Michael interrupts with a tone in his voice that dares someone to argue with him.

“Good? I need him to take the rest of the pills that Barrows didn’t have with him first though,” Canvers says and that’s when Alex sees the four bottles that Canvers has in hand.

“I need to talk to the General,” Alex tries, “And I need to write an after-action report for the abduction, and then start a report on what he’s done to Kyle and I.”

“I already started the after-action report, it’ll be waiting for you to add your insight into tomorrow and the other one will be waiting for you in the morning, sir.”

“I need to get my car from the gas station.”

“Already in the lot, it’s, you know, evidence in a crime, so either myself or Barrows will pick you up in the morning. It’ll be like old times.”

 

********************************

 

He leans his head against Michael’s shoulder, Mara keeps her hand resting on top of his. It keeps him grounded in the here and now instead of trying to delve into his mind and figure out what Andy Diaz has taken from him.

How much of the friendship that he and Kyle shared had been pulled out when Andy yanked out their memories with no regard to their feelings in the matter?

They’d still been friends after, they’d been best friends for _years_ after that, all the way up until high school so Andy’s place in their life hadn’t changed their dynamic much at all.

Michael parks in front of the cabin and Alex waits for him to get out before sliding out the drivers’ side, letting Michael’s arms brace him on the way down, then steady him as they walk slowly towards the house.

Mara beside them, her hand pressed gently to Alex’s back.

She hugs him once they’re safely inside, doors locked, security system activated.

“He was very scared,” she murmurs into his ear, she presses a kiss to his cheek then Michael’s and disappears into her room, door closing with a click behind her.

Michael doesn’t say anything, just leads him into their bedroom, closes the door behind them then slowly starts undressing him, he pushes his pants down his thighs then prods Alex to sit on the corner of the bed while he unlaces his boots. Pulls the pants down and away and then detaches the prosthetic with careful hands, running gentle fingers over the edge of the stump then up his thighs.

“I need a shower,” Alex murmurs tiredly, though he really would just like to lay down, have Michael curl up next so they can hold each other.

But he feels sticky, and kind of gross and he knows he’ll feel at least 20% better if he at least rinses off. Michael makes a noise as he gracefully comes to his feet, then sheds his clothes as he goes for Alex’s crutches.

He’s gloriously unashamedly naked when he turns around and Alex smiles, watching as Michael’s lips turn up into an answering smirk.

Michael helps him up from the bed, gets the crutches positioned under Alex’s arm then leans in to kiss him.

“Shower,” Michael nips at his lips, “then we can cuddle in bed.”

“Or we can just cuddle now,” Alex suggests, and Michael presses an open mouth kiss to his cheek, nuzzles his ear and pulls him close.

“Shower,” Michael says and gives him one last kiss before sauntering in the direction of the bathroom, Alex admires the view for a moment before following the lure of Michael naked and wet in a shower.

The water is already going, Michael has his chair positioned, and towels set to the side for when they’re done. He helps Alex in then sets the crutches aside as he climbs in behind him. He lathers up Alex’s hair, tilting his head forward to rinse and then washes his own as Alex scrubs down the rest of himself.

Michael maneuvers around him and then leans down to kiss him, lips warm against him and Alex drags his nails down his skin and when Michael straightens to finish rinsing off Alex wraps his arms around him and presses his face against his stomach.

He’s so tired. He’s not going to be good for much of anything but sleep when they’re finished.

Which was likely Michael’s intention he realizes as he helps him out and then pats him dry, letting him finish brushing his teeth and drying off while he dries himself and then wraps a towel around his waist and leaves the bathroom to go rummage in their refrigerator for something for Alex to eat.

He’s waiting on the bed, sheets already pulled back when Alex comes out, plate sitting on the end table and Alex isn’t even hungry, he just wants to curl up in the curve of Michael’s body which is what he does when he gets to the bed. Michael doesn’t say anything, just wraps an arm around him and pulls the sheets up over them. Alex lays his head on his shoulder and listens to Michael breathing, listens to the sound of his heart beating, lets himself be warmed by all the places they’re touching skin to skin.

“I was so scared,” Michael admits in a whisper into the dark of the room and Alex presses his lips to his shoulder. Reaches up with a hand to touch the side of Michael’s face and draws him closer. “I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

“I love you,” Alex says. “I’ll always do everything in my power to come back to you.”

 

********************************

 

Michael is staring at him when he wakes up, hand resting on his hip. His hair is in complete disarray and he’s the most beautiful thing that Alex has ever seen. He runs his fingers over Michael’s lips, over the curve of his jaw down the side of his neck and Michael rolls his head closer to his touch. Leans forward to kiss the side of his neck then moves so he’s straddling Alex’s hips.

Drags his hands down Alex’s chest while Alex reaches out to dig the fingers of one hand into Michael’s thigh while he wraps the other around him. Stroking lightly, not anything that is likely to get him off but just a reminder that he’s there.

“You should get the lube,” Alex says softly.

“Hmm,” Michael murmurs as he leans down to kiss him, he grinds down on him and Alex makes a noise that Michael laughs at.

But he breaks the kiss and reaches for the lube and Alex is expecting him to shift back and for fingers to start pressing into him, instead he puts the lube in Alex’s hand and shifts forward.

“You know what to do,” he breathes against Alex’s jaw and Alex closes his eyes and reminds himself to breathe.

They don’t do it this way very often, Alex can count the number of times he’s been inside Michael on one hand because he doesn’t enjoy it the way that Alex does and Alex is never going to force Michael to do anything that he wouldn’t 100% enjoy as much as Alex does.

“We don’t have to,” Alex says even as he’s slicking up fingers, pressing one against him. He’s likely not even going to last long enough to get inside him.

“I want you inside me,” Michael says and he’s looking directly at him, eyes open and clear. There’s nothing in them that screams that he’s using Alex’s body to punish himself for not being able to protect him.

He makes impatient noises, like Alex is taking too long, but Alex will take as long as he feels is long enough that Michael won’t be in physical pain as a result.

Of course, Michael is on top so Michael decides when he’s had enough, and he makes a sound of frustration and he moves back, pours lube on his fingers and wraps his hand around Alex and strokes him once, twice, then just sinks down onto him.

There’s a moment where Alex forgets to breathe, there’s just heat and tight and he can feel everything because Michael didn’t slide a condom on him and he should say something but Jesus fucking Christ.

Michael moves lazily on him, eyes hooded, one hand wrapped around himself and Alex can’t do anything more then hold onto Michael’s legs and try not to come before Michael does.

Michael leans forward and kisses him, one hand braced by his head, Alex moves a hand up to his hip, then the other and shifts his hips up. Michael grins against his lips, “there you are sweetheart.”

He grinds up as Michael grinds down and he can feel the exact second Michael starts coming, and he uses his hands to pull Michael as close to him as he can and comes.

 

********************************

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last vacation before the end of summer so there will be an update of Moving Forward on 8/5, then updates will resume on 8/16 with the next chapter of Family Ties.
> 
> I can't ever say it enough, but thank you all for continuing on this crazy journey with me!


	14. Chapter 14

**Family Ties 14/?**

 

Michael helps him get ready in the morning, which means he spends the time at the table reminding himself that he’s an adult that has responsibilities that can’t just drag his boyfriend off to bed because he’s a horrible tease that won’t stop touching him.

“Your face is going to freeze like that,” Michael says as he puts a cup of coffee in front of him, it’s an actual cup instead of a travel cup and Alex just looks at him.

“I found the coffee, don’t know how we missed it,” Michael says, he sounds disturbed, “they were exactly where they were supposed to be.”

Alex tugs on his hand so he’ll sit down next to him and leans into his side as he wraps his hand around the cup. It’s warm against his skin, almost as warm as Michael is.

Michael leans in close, lips brushing against his ear and Alex smiles, turns his head and kisses him.

“I should make breakfast or something,” Michael whispers against his lips.

“Or we can just pour some cereal in a bowl and sit here until Canvers or Barrows shows up.”

“That’s not a real breakfast,” Michael says, though he doesn’t move, just wraps an arm around Alex and tugs him incrementally closer.

They sit there, Alex holding his cup, Michael holding him, neither of them moving and he doesn’t glance at his watch or the clock on the microwave to see the time.

“If I were to ask,” Michael asks in a breath, it’s so quiet that Alex isn’t sure he _actually_ spoke, but he heard the words and felt Michael’s lips moving against the skin of his cheek.

It’s something they’ve never talked about, it’s something that he never thought was ever a possibility for him except in his wildest dreams.

“I’d say yes,” he says just as softly, without hesitation.

“Yeah?” Michael backs off for a second and takes one, then the other of Alex’s hands in his. Kisses both and then releases them so he cradles Alex’s face in his hands.

“Yeah,” Alex nods and Michael’s smile illuminates his face, then he kisses him. Softly, just a press of his lips against Alex’s.

The tap at the door is not unexpected, though Alex is tempted to ignore it and stay here in the moment. But he also knows that Canvers or Barrows won’t go away either, they’ll keep knocking, then they’ll text, then they’ll break into the house under the guise of a ‘welfare check’.

“I hate that they’re always on time,” Michael says as he comes to his feet with a sigh. “Is that a military thing? Can we train them out of it?”

 

********************************

 

“General at nine, and Sergeant Barrows probably mentioned it but he wants 30 minutes and Sergeant Canvers wants 30 as well,” Tulliver says as he follows Alex into his office, tablet in one hand, “Nasedo has also stopped by but he said he’d check back in the afternoon.”

There’re sticky notes tacked down to his desk and he can see Canvers familiar scrawl across most of them.

“You’ve penciled me in for a break somewhere, right?”

“As long as the General doesn’t keep you longer than an hour you have a block open from 1000 to 1030.”

“Alright, Barrows has probably had enough time to grab his stuff, send him in now and let Canvers know I’ll be ready for him as soon as he’s done.”

 

********************************

 

“The DNA test results came back,” Barrows starts off and he sets a folder in front of Alex like Alex is going to have any clue how to read it.

“That fast?”

“I have a friend,” Barrows flushes slightly.

“Does Perkins know about this ‘friend’?” Alex asks with a smirk, Barrows gives him a half shrug and continues on.

“Diaz says the pod is malfunctioning but neither Nasy or Sullivan can find any evidence of that. It seems to be in decent enough shape, though we still don’t know where it came from or how he got it. Nasy and I were talking, and while we don’t think there’s an immediate threat we also don’t think we should dawdle on getting her out of it.”

“Okay? So, she’s Rosa Ortecho then? Is this a confirmation of that?” Alex waves his hand at the folder.

“Yeah, yes sir, I had them run against the DNA taken at the crime scene where, well I guess she didn’t die after all, so I can confirm she’s Ms. Ortecho, but then I pushed the results into the system to verify them against her sister and well we got a result I wasn’t expecting.”

“Why were you verifying them against Liz?”

“Redundancy I guess, but the match was lower than I expected it to be, and if you flip the page you can see that there were actually two matches when I widened my parameters thinking maybe the sample was corrupted or something, but you can see she also shares some DNA markers with…”

“Kyle?” Alex frowns and he’s comparing the points. They’re different enough that they share a parent, but… “Please tell me that Kyle and Liz don’t share any markers?”

God he doesn’t want to have to have that conversation.

“No, I ran that almost immediately when I got the results because Ms. Ortecho and Mr. Valenti are dating, right? And I really didn’t want to have to have some awkward conversation about incest,” Barrows frowns.

Alex scrubs his hand over his face and tries not to long for his nice warm bed with his nice warm boyfriend slash almost fiancé in it.

“I’m guessing it would probably be Mr. Valenti’s dad and Ms. Ortecho’s mom, because otherwise I think they would know.”

“Okay, that’s a conversation we can have after we figure out the waking up Rosa part of the equation.”

“On that note, I had Sullivan pull the original autopsy report and there’s something hinky going on there, so we did some more digging, Sullivan should have emailed you PDF’s of both versions we found.”

“Both?” Alex raises an eyebrow, “why were there two autopsies on her?”

“I told him to label the one we think is the authentic report,” and Alex sees the one marked high priority with a subject line of ‘OPEN THIS ONE FIRST’, which Alex does, and then promptly frowns at.

“There is a _handprint_ on her face,” he says carefully.

“Yeah, that one was saved in with the files that Mr. Valenti gave us from his dad, the other one is the one that’s actually officially on file.”

“This says there were no drugs found in her system,” Alex says reading through the ME’s findings, “and I don’t see anything where they actually _performed_ an autopsy on her.”

“Because they didn’t, it’s noted on like page 7 or something, her body went missing from the morgue and the ME raised an alarm that got buried pretty damn quick. The official one is doctored as hell, height, weight are completely different, you never see a picture of her face so I’m pretty sure they used some poor Jane Doe to cover up the fact that the body was missing. Also, the ME is completely different and doesn’t seem to exist from what Sullivan can find.”

“Jesus.”

“Handprint is small,” Alex says almost absently, he’s staring at the picture, then his hand and making connections in his head that he really wishes he wasn’t. “There’s no way that’s Andy Diaz’s hand.”

“No sir, I uh, I think that’s a woman’s handprint,” Barrows says, he closes the folder in his lap which Alex hopes means he’s done delivering bad news.

“Thank you, Sergeant Barrows,” Alex says, and Barrows stands up.

“When are you going tell Ms. Ortecho about her sister?”

“I’ll have Tulliver schedule a meeting with her, break the news and let her help us figure out how to proceed.”

“When she wakes up, she might be able to tell us who the handprint belongs to,” Barrows says as he turns to go.

Alex nods, that’s exactly what he’s afraid of. There was only one female alien in Roswell at that time that hung around with Rosa and pretended she didn’t.

And that was Isobel.

 

********************************

 

“So how are you feeling, son?” the General asks and he’s peering at Alex through the camera like he can ascertain Alex’s health and continued well-being on his own.

“I’m fine,” the General raises an eyebrow at him, “I am, little sore, a lot pissed off,” Alex shrugs. “So basically the status quo.”

“What is our new guest saying? Anything of interest?”

“The memory gaps that Nasy found seem to be caused by him, he did the same thing to Dr. Valenti.”

“And do we know why?”

“Supposedly to protect us,” Alex snorts. “I’m not sure how stealing those memories protected us, I can guarantee that my dad and probably Kyle’s dad figured out something was amiss pretty damn quick. I sent off some questions to Lieutenant Davies to broach with my dad, see if he can shed some light.”

“I don’t trust Jesse Manes to tell us a damn thing without twisting it to his advantage,” the General states.

“He says he came back during senior year though I can’t find any evidence of it, so he took more memories from both Kyle and myself during that time frame, considering who he has in the pod I’m going to go out on limb and say whatever he took had something to do with Rosa Ortecho.”

“I don’t want you talking to him by yourself,” the General says.

“I’ve got Sergeant Canvers covering his interrogation,” Alex says, as much as he wants to be in that room and dictating what direction it takes, he also knows that’s likely what Andy Diaz wants.

“You could take a couple of days,” the General suggests, Alex shakes his head and the General continues on. “Son, it’s not a sign of weakness to want to hole up in a safe place and regain your equilibrium.”

“Maybe,” Alex allows. “But after we figure out how we’re going to proceed with Rosa.”

 

********************************

 

Canvers has both the after-action report from the abduction and the incident report on the mindwipe that Andy Diaz has performed on him and Kyle mostly filled out when he presents them to Alex.

“I thought I was doing my own paperwork from now on.”

“Don’t get used to it, sir,” Canvers says.

“15 caves huh?” Alex says as he reads through the after-action report.

“The guys started getting pissed off pretty damn quick when every cave was empty. About cave number eight I started letting them rotate, I think we need to do some exercises in the cave system. See if we can figure out how to keep them from bouncing our signals to hell and back.”

“Sullivan and I’ll pull the locator and test it, after we deal with everything else,” Alex says absently. “When did you notify Michael that there was an issue?”

Canvers frowns. “Probably an hour after you hit your panic button, we found your car right away, but your phone was in there and we’re pulling his vehicle apart because we couldn’t even pick up a signal from the bug in your leg until you were at the caves.”

“Probably a portable jammer in his car,” Alex muses. “If he wasn’t a bad guy we could totally use him.”

“Nasy put dates to the time frames he thinks were taken from you and Doctor Valenti. They mostly match up pretty evenly.”

Alex frowns, “that’s weird.”

“Weird, sir?”

“Kyle and I didn’t hang out senior year,” or sophomore or junior year, and he could only count Kyle as his best friend for the first two months of their freshmen year. “Only when we were with Liz, Maria and Rosa, and we certainly didn’t talk.”

“Time frames match, Nasy could probably go back in and figure out an exact period based on the memories surrounding the holes…”

“Last resort, have you gotten anything out of him?”

“Same old rhetoric, I was protecting them, I was protecting them, I was protecting them… I think he totally forgot who your dads were and what they were involved in, I don’t think there was any way that at the very least _your_ dad didn’t notice that you were missing some time. I sent Lieutenant Davies the info we had so he can press your dad and figure out what he did and didn’t know.”

“Okay, let me know if you think me wandering into the room will cause him to talk more or less.”

“I think he’d talk more but I also think if I put you in a room with him that Mr. Guerin will kill me so how about we hold off on that as a last resort.”

 

********************************

  



	15. Chapter 15

**Family Ties 15/?**

 

Nasy sneaks into his office about thirty minutes before he’s scheduled to depart, it’s marked helpfully in his calendar, so he can’t ‘forget’ that he’s leaving at 1700.

It looks like Canvers is his driver.

“So, the pod that…” Alex holds his hand up and waves at the door, Nasy flushes but then shuts and locks the door and makes a hand motion in the direction of the blinds to which Alex shrugs.

“So apparently he bought the pod he used off one of those dark web sites that you and the General argue about.”

“Really?”

“Canvers got it out of him, and Sullivan did a search of his banking history and we can see the payment going out, but we can’t dig any deeper without your authorization.”

Alex looks at him and Nasy looks back, then sighs. “You’re not going to let us dig around in the dark web, are you?”

“I guess the better question is do we _need_ to know where the pod came from? Or can you get your ship talking to it and find out who the previous inhabitant was without delving into circles we might not be able to get back out of?”

“Sullivan was very excited about the prospect,” Nasy says.

“I’m sure he is. And we’ll probably start digging around the dark web sooner rather then later, but if we don’t need to I’m not going to open that pandora’s box up quite yet.”

 

********************************

 

“So I need you to swing by,” Alex calls Liz Thursday morning, as early as he can get away with and know that both Kyle and Max aren’t with her, “and I need you to keep it under wraps which means don’t tell Kyle or Max or Maria.”

“Is something going on?” Liz says, though her tone already has that resigned quality that Alex is used to hearing from Michael before he has to say it’s classified.

“It’s classified, but I need your assistance with something and I need to not have everyone in here asking questions that we can’t answer yet.”

“I have some time today,” Liz says and Alex opens up his calendar to make sure he doesn’t have conflicts, his Thursday looked pretty full when he left on Wednesday, but it looks like Tulliver has moved whatever was scheduled for Thursday afternoon over to Friday or just outright cancelled it.

“I have a block of time available at noon,” Alex says, though he also sends Tulliver an IM querying on the status’ of the meetings that were supposed to make up his afternoon.

“I’ll bring lunch,” Liz says before hanging up.

“I moved everything that should have been this afternoon to Friday or next week,” Tulliver says from the doorway, “except for the video call with the General because his schedule is crazy for the rest of forever so we’re going to just try and connect you on the fly at some point.”

 

********************************

 

Canvers appears with Liz in tow shortly after noon, her visitor badge is clipped to the collar of her shirt and a bag with takeout containers in her hand.

“You want me to…” Canvers makes a hand motion and Liz looks between the two of them. Alex shakes his head.

“Make sure Nasy is ready for us when we’re done,” Alex says and Canvers nods and closes the door behind him as he leaves.

“So what’s going on? I’m pretty sure this doesn’t have anything to do with the missing memories you and Kyle have,” Liz says as Alex makes his way around his desk to the table. He had Tulliver make copies of everything they’ve found so far, and he has his own copies.

“No, but it’s something that we found when we took Andy Diaz into custody,” Alex sits down and after a second Liz sits in the chair near his.

“Eat first,” Liz says, pulling the containers out of the bag, she’s brought utensils and bottles of water as well.

“Do we need to talk about you and Max and Kyle?” Alex asks, he doesn’t really want to know, not really, it’s not his business.

“We’re all consenting adults,” Liz says as she starts eating. “It’s weird though, kind of figured that you know, macho guys they are, that they’d not be okay with it but,” she shrugs.

“What do they even talk about?” Alex wonders, Liz makes a face and Alex laughs at her.

“Books mostly, and some trashy TV show they’re both addicted to, plus once we got past the initial having sex with another guy freak-out they both had to have, I think they actually like each other, you know as people.”

“Always helpful when you start a sexual relationship with someone,” Alex says, Liz rolls her eyes at him.

“So why am I here? I know you didn’t invite me here for lunch, by myself, to talk about Kyle and Max.”

Alex closes his takeout container and pushes it away, ignoring Liz’s raised eyebrow. Everyone is so concerned about how much he eats and when and he’d really like to remind them all that he’s a grown ass man that’s been taking care of himself since his mom left and not managed to develop an eating disorder or end up with scurvy.

But that’s also a fight he’s not willing to have at the moment.

“What do you remember about the day that Rosa died?” he starts and Liz goes pale as she closes her own box and takes a drink of her water.

“I…” she starts, and shakes her head, her lips twist, “It’s been almost eleven years now, why are you…?”

“Some things that Andy Diaz said during the time he had me and something we found,” Alex says, “do you know if your dad identified her body when they found it?”

Liz shakes her head, “he never said, but I don’t think so.”

“And you didn’t either, correct?” Liz jerks her head at him, she’s staring at him with wide eyes and he taps his fingers against the still closed file. “So neither of you saw physically _saw_ her after the accident? Not even at the funeral home?”

“They,” Liz clears her throat, “Sheriff Valenti told us that they identified her through dental records and the funeral home said there was so much damage and they recommended we not look or have an open casket… so we would remember her the way she was and not the way she died.”

Alex nods, pretty much exactly what he remembers, though he can also vividly recall the sobbing Liz and Maria leaning on each other, the stoic Arturo and Mimi just looking so heartbroken.

“Why are you asking me about this, now?” Liz asks softly, there’s tears in her eyes and Alex hates it but pushes through.

“So when Andy Diaz took me we found something,” Alex says, “And since it concerns Rosa I’m going to try and let you direct me on how you want us to proceed…”

“You know, don’t you,” Liz says and the expression on her face is inscrutable.

“Why don’t you tell me what _you_ know? And I can corroborate as needed,” Alex suggests.

She takes a breath and leans forward laying her hand on the table, he lays his over top and she grips it tightly. A reminder, from when they were younger, that they’re in this together.

“I asked Kyle if he could find me the autopsy report on Rosa,” Liz says softly, “I don’t know what I was hoping to find, maybe proof that Rosa didn’t kill those girls, that she wasn’t using again and Kyle found it but then he found a second one, somewhere and…” her voice breaks and she bows her head.

Alex flips open the file on the table and Liz lifts her head to look at it.

“He found the one in my father’s files,” Alex says. The picture is clear as day, Rosa’s face with the shining handprint across it.

Liz doesn’t look surprised to see it.

“I confronted Max about it, and the handprint is so small, so I knew it wasn’t him and Michael’s hand was broken and that only left…”

“Isobel,” Alex finishes and Liz nods once, she swipes away tears.

“She doesn’t remember anything about it, doesn’t even really remember being _friends_ with Rosa and I want to be so angry, she either killed my sister or she was there when it happened and…” she takes a sobbing breath, “it’s hard to stay angry at someone that doesn’t have the first clue why you’re angry with them. You know?”

“I do, but I also think _if_ Isobel was involved it wasn’t of her own free will.”

“Why are you asking me all this about Rosa? You were there,” Liz says and there’s an expression of dawning realization on her face, “you think Andy Diaz was involved in what happened to Rosa and those girls?” Liz asks.

“I do and I it’ll be easier to show you what we found then try and explain it,” Alex pushes himself back from the table and goes back to his desk. He’d had Tulliver print up the new non-disclosure form and when he puts it front of her Liz looks back and forth between it and him.

“Didn’t I already sign a bunch of these?” she asks, even as she skims it and signs her name. He puts his initials right below and then heads towards the door with the paper in hand, Liz follows because he knows he’s peaked her interest.

“I’ll let them know you’re on your way, sir,” Tulliver says when Alex hands the form off and then starts down the hallway, Liz no more than a stride behind him.

He had Nasy and Canvers move the pod Rosa was in to a separate room, so as to not have to figure out how to get Liz through a secured area. He’ll have them secure the pod after they’re done, give Liz time to figure out how she wants to move forward.

He scans his badge to gain entrance into the room and both Nasy and Canvers come to their feet when they enter. Liz stopping suddenly when she sees the pod in the center of the room.

Even with all the lights the illumination of the interior of the pod is visible, he puts an arm over her shoulder and she sags next to him.

She knows, he doesn’t know how, but he _knows_ that _she_ knows that Rosa is inside it. Even without having seen her.

She takes a step forward and Alex moves with her, arm still around her and it’s seventeen slow halting steps to the face plate of the pod and it feels like eleven years prior and the hell that was that time.

Remembers that absolute horror of that 24-hour period that saw his father attacking him and Michael and ending with the news that Rosa was dead and was somehow responsible for two other girls being dead as well.

“How? Why?” Liz is sobbing, and he’s lost time somewhere because she’s clutching at him now and sobbing into his BDU shirt and he’s crying as well.

Canvers and Nasy have moved away, backs to them to give them the tiniest bit of privacy and he knows that Sullivan will have the security systems going but will also have covered this monitor to allow them this time.

 

********************************

 

Liz manages to compose herself fairly quickly, pulling herself up back together and straightening her shoulders like she’s heading off into battle.

“So, like I said, I’m going to let you dictate how we proceed, she’s your family… so I need to know what you’d like to do going forward,” Alex says as he stands there next to her gazing down at a Rosa frozen in time at nineteen.

“We bury her back in her grave,” Liz says, she presses her fingers against the glass separating her from her sister and Alex realizes suddenly that she doesn’t understand what Rosa being in the pod _means_.

“We could do that, but she’s, uh, alive in there so I don’t think that’s necessarily the best direction we could take,” Alex says softly.

“What?”

 

********************************

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should say, in Alex's defense, that they probably have never had to figure out how to tell someone that their dead sister is still alive having been somehow resurrected by an alien and shoved in a pod.
> 
> So he probably doesn't have a script penned out for that like he does for guess what you're dating/married/off-spring of an alien


	16. Chapter 16

**Family Ties 16/?**

 

“Alive?” Liz asks again, and Alex just nods, Canvers is looking between them like he’s wondering if he should be summoning some of their mental health care professionals.

Nasy has wandered away to tinker away with stuff in other rooms while Liz has her mental breakdown.

“Like if we opened the pod, she would actually keep breathing, and would wake up and…” Liz’s hands wave in front of him and Alex would sigh but he doesn’t think it would help anything along.

“Yes,” Alex says, again.

“How is this even…?” Liz just stares down at her older sister, frozen in time at nineteen and now, technically, her younger sister.

Alex still hasn’t figured out the logistics of how they’re going to introduce an awakened Rosa to society, he’s really hoping that they can go young cousin route our some heretofore unknown younger half-sister.

“We’re not going to have Nasy come back and explain it,” Canvers says, “because Barrows will find out and I really don’t want to listen to him go through his two-hour presentation on how this is the first sign of the upcoming zombie apocalypse again.”

“Really?” Alex asks.

“There was a power point and everything, I was actually contemplating texting Perkins and seeing how close we are to them being on again instead of off again because he’s not normally this nuts when he’s getting laid on a semi regular basis, but I didn’t because I knew you’d make _that_ face at me,” Canvers waves a hand in his direction. “And I didn’t want Perkins to break into my apartment and stab me to death.”

“But alive? She was dead,” Liz says faintly.

 _Should I call someone?_ Alex asks with his eyebrows. Canvers shrugs at him which Alex takes to mean ‘only if you want to have this conversation with more people for another two hours.’

“How do I even explain this to my dad?” Liz asks and she’s staring at the pod intently.

“That’s up to you, I’ll support your decision provided that the appropriate paperwork is filled out,” Alex says, he already has the NDA ready for Arturo to sign because he’s sure that any explanation is going to have to contain the news that aliens are real.

Liz touches the glass separating her from her sister.

“Do you think she’s dreaming in there?” she asks softly, “or do you think she’s having nightmares about those last minutes with Isobel or Andy or those girls or whoever actually killed her?”

“I don’t know,” Alex says. “The few aliens I’ve talked to that even remember being in stasis don’t remember anything about the actual experience.”

“I hope she’s not dreaming about anything,” Liz says, “unless it’s about us at the Crashdown being kids, something innocuous and boring and not at all traumatic.”

 

********************************

 

He sends Liz home with a verbal reminder that she can’t actually talk to anyone about the Rosa situation until she comes to a decision on she wants them to proceed.

“But I can call you, right?” she asks. “If I need to?”

“Of course you can,” Alex says, and resigns himself to being woken up with random 2 am texts while Liz continues the breakdown that she can’t discuss the reasons behind with Max or Kyle.

“So does this mean no barbecue this weekend?” Canvers asks as he’s driving him home. “I have to say I was kind of looking forward to having a home cooked meal.”

“I think if I try to cancel the barbecue with this short of notice I will have both Isobel and Michael plotting my murder instead of how many sides and how much meat is too much,” they’ve been planning the menu for most of the week. Isobel in charge of everything that is not meat that Michael is putting on the grill. He thinks Maria is supplying both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.

“That would be a great way to re-introduce…” Canvers starts.

“I’m not even going to make that suggestion to Liz, she needs time to come to grips with the situation and we’ll need to bring Arturo into the loop. We also still need to discuss the DNA aspect and how and when to talk to Kyle about that, technically he should have some say in whatever decision is come to about Rosa but…”

“It was just an idea,” Canvers says weakly when Alex trails off.

“And we still need to figure out how Isobel is involved in whatever happened to Rosa,” Alex says. He doesn’t want to have that conversation, but he thinks waking Rosa up and having her screaming that Isobel Evans murdered her is _also_ not a conversation he wants to be part of.

“I’ll take another go at Mr. Diaz tomorrow,” Canvers says. “Maybe lead him in the direction of that night, I’m fairly confident that whatever happened to Rosa is also probably tied to some of your and Dr. Valenti’s missing memories.”

“I can…”

“Nope, I’ll put you in room with that guy when and only when we have absolutely no other choice to get information, right now he’s chatty and remorseful, if I can keep him that way I might never need to tempt Mr. Guerin’s or Nasy’s self-control.”

 

********************************

 

He’d been surprised to not find Michael in his normal position on the front porch, lounging on the swing but he completely understands when he walks inside there are three pots on the stove and their house smells like heaven even if Michael looks slightly frazzled.

“I love my sister,” Michael says.

“Okay,” Alex says half wondering if it’s too late to go back out the door and catch Canvers before he goes down the driveway and makes it to the main road.

“He’s been like this all afternoon,” Mara says, she’s sitting cross legged in the middle of the couch, magazines on either side of her and Michael’s laptop balanced on her legs.

She smiles a welcome at him and Alex smiles back because she’s nice and relaxed, a far cry from her son who looks fairly close to vibrating out of his skin.

“Isobel has decided we need three types of chicken and somehow now I’m responsible for both the potato and pasta salads,” Michael says, he looks close to pulling on his hair so Alex moves close and loops an arm over his neck and pulls him close. Michael slouches into him, hands pressing into his back and Alex sways with him for a moment before drawing back and kissing him gently.

“Hi,” Alex murmurs and Michael’s lips curve into a smile that he presses against his cheek. “Let me go change and I’ll help you.”

 

********************************

 

It takes them a couple of hours to pull all the salads together, Mara helps when directed and they make sandwiches and taste test the salads.

“She won’t even know,” Michael says, Alex raises an eyebrow and Michael shrugs.

“I like the potato salad,” Mara says and helps herself to a second serving.

“I can always make more, the chicken and ribs are all prepped already,” Michael says as he holds up his plate for his mom to give him a second helping as well when she holds the spoon up in question.

“Do we need tables or chairs or anything? I feel like I’m not helping put this party that I’m still not quite sure why we’re having together at all.”

“Just make sure your guys show up and maybe try and make sure that no military emergency is going to randomly occur to have all of you have to leave?”

“You’re offering food they don’t have to cook or hunt for themselves so barring death they’ll all be here; and I can’t promise anything on the other, but Lieutenant Davies and his boys are coming into town tomorrow, so they’ll man the weekend shift. Unless there’s a national emergency that we can’t do anything about we should be ok.”

Michael side eyes him like he doesn’t believe him, Alex keeps eating because there really _is_ nothing he can do about that.

 

********************************

 

He thinks the best part about his life now is he gets to climb into bed next to Michael each night and curl up in the warm circle of his arms and he doesn’t give his father even the barest of thoughts.

If he could write a letter to the teen-age version of him that went through hell and never really thought there was any possible way that he could ever get to love someone openly and be almost all the way to sharing his life with a man that he loves more every day…

He’d tell him that it does get better and dreams do come true.

And that Michael Guerin’s curls _are_ really as soft as they dreamed about pressed against the skin of his neck.

 

********************************

 

Liz is waiting in his office when he gets there with Canvers in tow the next morning. Dark circles under her eyes but she has an expression on her face that screams that she’s made a decision.

“How likely that Kyle and or Max will be calling me in a couple of hours to find out what’s going on?” he asks as he sets his bag down and waves Canvers into the room.

“I didn’t talk to them last night,” Liz says. “I didn’t want to have to lie to them, so I spent the night with my dad talking around things and he’s going to be here at eight so if you need…”

“I already had papers drawn up for him to sign,” Alex says and Canvers rolls his eyes at him but goes to rifle through Tulliver’s desk.

“And I want to tell Max and Kyle and the others about Rosa,” Liz continues.

“We can tell them,” Alex nods, “But we need to maybe discuss something else before your dad gets here just so we have all our ducks in a row.”

“She’s not pregnant in there, right? Because she was spending a lot of time with Isobel and if she is I don’t want to know that means for alien physiology.”

“Not pregnant,” Alex shakes his head, Canvers comes back in waving the paper. “Can you close the door?”

“Do I want to know this?” Liz asks.

“How far did you flip through the file yesterday?” Alex counters, he knows how far she made it, at least three pages in, because if she’d made it five pages in they would have had this discussion yesterday.

The look she shoots him screams that she knows he knows exactly far she made it.

“We did a DNA test to confirm Rosa’s identity,” Alex says as he unlocks his desk and pulls out the two folders that he and Liz had looked through the day prior. He joins Liz and Canvers at the table and sets one of the files in front of her and sits in the chair nearest her.

“Okay…” Liz says, she flips through the pages until she reaches the one with the DNA results. He can tell the exact moment when it dawns on her what she’s looking at.

“Yeah,” he nods when she looks at him with wide eyes. “And no, Sergeant Barrows already confirmed you don’t share any markers with Kyle so…”

“Oh dios mio,” she breathes, “that’s not a conversation I wanted to have with Kyle and Max after we’re finally all on the same page.”

 

********************************

 

Arturo knows already, Alex isn’t sure how or when he came into the knowledge, but he _knows_ Rosa isn’t his daughter and he _knows_ aliens live among them.

“It’s the secreto peor guardado,” Arturo says, “Amanita was already pregnant when I came here but Jim was married and,” he shrugs. “She was my sueno since I was a young boy, and Rosa was a good baby, so it wasn’t a hardship… plus Liz is mine so…”

Liz looks a little put out that she doesn’t need to comfort her father over her mothers’ indiscretions, but Alex is thankful that this is all going very smoothly.

“She’s in a pod,” Alex says, “We need to come to some sort of agreement on how you’d both like to handle the situation.”

Arturo and Liz share a look then turn identical eyes on him, “and please don’t say it’s up to me, that’s not pressure I’m prepared for now.”

“We wake her up,” Arturo says slowly. “Though maybe Kyle should be involved in the decision; and maybe the girlfriend that she didn’t hide very well.”

 

********************************

  



	17. Chapter 17

**Family Ties 17/?**

 

“I guess I should be glad it’s not Valenti again?” Michael asks as they file into his office and he sees Liz sitting at the table already. He thinks he’s going to need to move to one of the bigger meeting rooms if they’re going to continue trying to fill his office with everyone he knows.

“Did something happen with your dad?” Max is asking while Liz allows Kyle to wrap fingers around her wrist and take her pulse.

“No, Alex called and wanted to talk to me yesterday and he gave me some news that I needed some time to process,” Liz says, she presses her lips to Max’s cheek, then loops an arm around Kyle’s neck to kiss him.

Alex waits for them all to make themselves comfortable, Nasy has already taken Arturo to the room with Rosa’s pod in it. Liz is between Kyle and Max on the couch, hands resting on their legs. Michael is perched behind his desk. Maria on the arm of the couch and Noah and Isobel in chairs next to each other, hands linked together.

“Alright,” he says, taking a breath. “So short and to the point. When Andy Diaz took me we found a pod in the cave. Rosa Ortecho was inside it.”

He can see Isobel jerk, hear Maria’s gasp, see Kyle’s arm tighten around Liz’s shoulder and Max flinch. Noah doesn’t really react, other than to tighten his hand around Isobel’s, so it looks like maybe she told him whatever she could remember about her relationship with Rosa at some point.

Michael is behind him so he’s not sure what his reaction is, but probably a mixture of any of the ones that he can see.

“She’s alive in the pod and we believe that there is a possibility that the memories that Kyle and I are missing are linked somehow to how Rosa ended up alive and, in the pod, stuck at nineteen.”

“Alive?” Isobel asks faintly, her face is pale, eyes wide and Noah lifts their joined hands to his lips. She looks stunned. Though Max looks stunned as well, probably like everyone else they thought her dead, from the hand print on her face they either tried to save her and thought themselves unsuccessful or were responsible for her being thought dead in the first place.

“Alive,” Alex confirms. “Liz and Arturo have made the decision to open the pod and let her wake up. I’ve given them some options that are available to them to go over with Rosa once she’s awake and ready to make those decisions.”

“She’s alive,” Isobel says and she turns to look at Max who still looks stunned. Probably if he looks behind him Michael will look as stunned as well.

“We tried to heal her,” Max says faintly, Liz takes his hand between hers, Kyle reaches along the back of the couch and presses his fingers to the back of Max’s neck. “It didn’t work, we… weren’t able to…”

Isobel is sobbing, hands covering her face and Noah is leaning over her, arm over her shoulder, pressing his lips to her temple. He looks conflicted and Alex would love to know what he’s actually been told about Isobel’s relationship with Rosa.

“I’m not going to profess to understand how this happened, and Andy Diaz is being less then forthcoming on the details surrounding her resurrection,” Alex says, it’s a massive understatement. He’s being an absolute dick and Canvers is about at the end of his rope with him.

He’s demanding to talk to Alex and Kyle, which there’s no way Alex is putting Kyle in a room with the guy and there’s no way that Canvers will sign off on _him_ entering the room with him so they’re at an impasse.

Alex thinks he’ll let Andy have the weekend to stew, then let Lieutenant Davies and his boys at him bright and early Monday morning.

 

********************************

 

He leaves them alone in his office, Tulliver keeping an eye out so if he’s needed he can be paged back. When he gets to the room where they’re keeping Rosa’s pod for now he can see Arturo sitting next to it, hand pressed to the glass like if he tries hard enough he can touch her face.

“They needed a few minutes,” Alex says when he comes in, door swinging closed behind him, lock securing the room.

“She looks like she’s dormido,” Arturo says. He looks at him then looks back down at Rosa, shame on his face and Alex knows what he’s thinking without Arturo having to say a word.

“There’s no drugs in her system,” Alex says, he stands next to Arturo, hand on his shoulder.

“She’d been behaving so oddly before,” Arturo says, “her behavior so erratic.”

“I’m sure the gentleman we have in custody will eventually shed some light on why that was. But we did blood tests and they all came back clean, depending on when he put her in there, we don’t think it likely that there were any drugs in her system at the time when we thought she’d been killed.”

“We were talking through some of Mr. Ortecho’s options,” Nasy says, pulling a chair forward and raising an eyebrow until Alex sighs and sits down.

“Did we make any decisions? I know you said you thought Kyle and Isobel should have some say, but I really think that you and Liz are the best equipped to make those decisions for her and for your family.”

Arturo is silent for a long time, hand still resting against the glass and the expression on his face is so sad.

“I don’t want to put Rosa back into a place where she feels like she has no options besides the drugs,” Arturo says. “And so much time has passed, she looks so young compared to what she should be…”

“Prima Rosalita from Mexico?” Alex asks and Arturo nods.

“Is that the wrong choice, do you think?”

“Arturo, you need to do what is best for you and Liz, we’ll stand by whatever choice you make here. You are both victims, you _all_ are victims.”

“She’s still nineteen in there,” Arturo says, “And I don’t know how to explain how my nineteen-year-old daughter, who should be my thirty-year-old daughter looks the way she looks.”

“Fountain of youth?” Alex suggests, and Arturo laughs at him.

 

********************************

 

Canvers is waiting outside the door when he comes back out.

“It looked serious in there so I didn’t want to interrupt, did Mr. Ortecho make a decision?”

“Cousin Rosalita visiting from Mexico,” Alex says, Canvers nods likely thinking much along the same lines as Alex. There was realistically no other decision they could make.

“Got a little more info out of Mr. Diaz,” Canvers says as he starts walking, leading Alex into a conference room instead of back to his office. He closes the door behind him and Alex sighs and sits at the table, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Apparently he came back into town the summer right before your senior year started.”

“I was not expecting that,” Alex says slowly. “I was figuring closer to when Rosa actually supposedly died.”

“He was still in town then, under some form of house arrest because your dad and Mr. Valenti’s dad _did_ both notice the missing time,” Canvers says, sitting opposite him at the table.

“Huh,” Alex thinks, trying to remember the summer before senior year. He thinks…

The sharp spike of pain centered in the center of his forehead startles him, then the feel of Canvers hand on his arm, lifting his head to press tissues to his nose.

“Don’t think about it,” Canvers says and Alex blinks at him, raising his own hand to replace Canvers.

“I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that summer,” Alex mutters.

“Yeah, probably would have notice the nose bleeds and migraine headaches,” Canvers nods sagely.

“Do we know what he took?”

“He wouldn’t get into specifics, just general and maybe this’. But it seems like your dads were maybe annoyed that you and Kyle weren’t friends anymore and were forcing the two of you to spend time together. At some point Diaz and his mom came into town and he joined your little miserable group of two.”

“Jesus,” Alex mutters, he pulls the tissues away and presses them right back.

“I’ll text Barrows to bring us some Excedrin,” Canvers says, pulling his phone out.

“He’s a wily little shit, but from context clues I think he accidentally outed himself by using one of his powers in front of you both and freaked out, couldn’t tell if he freaked out because you freaked out or he freaked out simply because of who your dads were, but he yanked all those memories out plus any memories of him and left you stranded in a forest or something.”

“I remember that,” Alex says, it’s a faint memory, of him and Kyle trying to figure out where their supplies were if their dads were forcing them to do survival training. “I think that was the only time I’ve ever seen my dad worried about me.”

 

********************************

 

Michael is alone in his office when he gets back there, still prodding at his nose gently.

“You okay?” Michael says, tilting his head up and hands gentle against his face.

“Yeah, we think we figured out what memories Andy Diaz took from Kyle and I,” Alex mutters, he’d love nothing more then to burrow into Michael’s arms and let him hold him.

“We think he might have been doing something to Isobel as well,” Michael says.

“Did Liz mention anything else?”

“You mean about Valenti’s dad actually being Rosa’s father? Yeah, she mentioned it, said if Kyle wanted to have some say in whatever decision they came to about her.”

“I think Arturo has already come to a decision, so likely it’ll just be making sure everyone is on the same page,” Alex says. He rests his forehead against Michael’s shoulder and counts to five, then straightens and rolls his shoulders.

“Why do you think Andy Diaz was doing something to Isobel?” he asks.

“Isobel was having these episodes in high school,” Michael makes a face, both like he’s wishing that someone else was the one having this conversation with Alex and like he had a better word then ‘episodes’.

“Episodes?”

“Yeah, she’d forget stuff, or do stuff that was totally not, you know, something Isobel would do.”

“Her primary power is mental, right?” Michael looks at him, cocks his head to the side like he doesn’t understand what Alex is saying.

“Why do you say it like that? Like primary, like there are others.”

“Because there are,” Alex says. “Healing, telekinesis, telepathy, those are the big three and most Antarians I’ve met can use all three, one is always a primary, and the others are secondary, weaker but no less accessible.”

Michael is just staring at him, looking slightly dumbfounded, he doesn’t say anything, so Alex continues. “I’ve met a few Antarians with precognition and one with electrokinesis and another with clairsentience. But Nasy says those are not the norm so…”

The tap at the door interrupts them and when Alex looks over Lieutenant Davies is standing there with Canvers at his shoulder.

“Are we interrupting?” he asks and Alex looks at Michael who shrugs at him.

“No, come on in.”

“I’m going to go see if the others have managed to agree on anything yet,” Michael says and Alex grins at him, he can’t really see Isobel and Liz agreeing on anything with the exception maybe of yes, Rosa needs to come out of the pod. “You want me to hang out until you’re done so I can give you a ride home?”

“If you want to,” Alex says. “One of the guys can give me a lift if you need to get picnic stuff ready.”

“I’ll wait,” Michael tosses a wave over his shoulder as he goes out the door that Canvers shuts behind him.

Alex comes around his desk and sits down at the table with Davies and Canvers, looking between the two of them.

“So what are our updates?”

“Your dad finally confirmed Diaz’s story right before we were due to head out, they found you and Dr. Valenti in the forest, no memory of how you got there. No sign of Diaz, no _memories_ of Diaz which I guess just reinforced your father’s belief that the Antarians were a menace and he was doing the right thing.”

“I’m guessing they caught up to him at some point?”

“Well he was a seventeen-year-old kid at that point, I don’t think he could hide from them very well regardless. But they put him under armed guard, apparently there was some talk about moving him to the Caulfield facility, but he couldn’t get Sheriff Valenti to agree.”

“Jesus,” Alex mutters and even Canvers looks a little pale at the thought of a kid, even a kid that turned out like Andy Diaz being held at Caulfield.

“Still not quite sure how he managed to get away in the long run, he obviously had help, but your dad wouldn’t elaborate any further and he stopped looking altogether a couple years ago. Guess he thought the kid was likely dead or something. I will say he’s 99% confident that Diaz had something to do with Rosa Ortecho’s and a couple of other girls’ deaths, but he couldn’t actually prove it.”

“Well depending on if they can come to a decision we’ll probably get a chance to ask Rosa herself sooner rather than later,” Alex says.

“If she even remembers anything,” Canvers says playing the pessimist since Alex is taking the optimist side.

Alex is really just hoping that they’re not going to wake Rosa up just to have her screaming that Isobel murdered her.

 

********************************

  



	18. Chapter 18

**Family Ties 18**

 

His last meeting of the day is a video conference with the General. They’ve been forgoing the group meetings with all the team leads for the last couple of weeks as Captain Fitzpatrick and Lieutenant Neville had both been on active ops in countries that meant that they’d be missing sleep to video in and the General doesn’t like doing that to them.

They look to be back stateside if their appearance on the chat plus their regular office backdrops is any indication.

“We’re still going through the data we’re pulling from the Caulfield servers,” Alex says when it’s his turn to report out. “And we’re cross-validating against the data we’re pulling from the files that were supplied to us by a former Project Shepherd participant, we might have two physical sites that will need to be checked out in the near future.”

That was information handed off by Sullivan literally as he was closing the door so he and Davies could video in.

“We’re ready to go back out whenever, so we can take one of the sites,” Fitzpatrick says, “my team tends to get in trouble if I give them too much base time.”

“I trust you boys to split it up however,” the General says, “just make sure your teams have _enough_ downtime, we don’t need anyone having a breakdown now.”

He thinks they all know what it means, two new sites might end up meaning two new prospective Caulfield’s with the possibility of survivors that might be related to Antarians they already know.

Alex is half hopeful that if there _are_ Antarians being held in those facilities that Mara’s missing husband, Michael’s missing father might be among them… or maybe Max and Isobel’s missing parents.

He needs to schedule some time to sit down with Mara and Nasy and get the absolute _whole_ story on who they are.

He knows they haven’t told him the truth on it. And he’s let it slide while Mara recovered, but he thinks they’re getting past the point where he can let it slide anymore. He hopes they aren’t already _past_ the point where it’s going to bite them in the ass.

“My team finished the debrief on the soldiers brought in from Caulfield,” Davies is saying when he tunes back into the conversation.

“Anything of note?” the General asks.

“Nothing we didn’t already know, are we making any headway on figuring out who our mysterious General Anders is?”

“As far as any documentation that can be found, physical or otherwise, General Anders is a ghost. Doesn’t even have a first name. Everything is signed General J. Anders, can’t even tell if it’s a man or woman,” the General sounds irritated and Alex has known the General for a long time, he _knows_ the man hates a puzzle he can’t figure out, so he also knows what’s coming.

He’s been waiting for the General to officially give him the go ahead for days now.

“You have my permission, Captain Manes, to start the alternative searches that we already discussed.”

“Yes sir.”

 

********************************

 

When he gets back from the video conference, everyone else has already left, just Michael lounging on his couch when he gets back.

“They all want the same thing,” Michael says with just the tiniest tinge of frustration evident as he waits for Alex to shut his laptop down and lock his desk.

“Can’t decide on the best course of action?”

“That’s just it, they all _want_ the same fucking thing… Rosa woke up… yet Maria won’t agree with Isobel because she doesn’t want to look like she’s _agreeing_ with Isobel and Kyle doesn’t want to make a decision unless Liz has already voiced _her_ decision and it matches because he feels like he shouldn’t have any more of a voice then she does.”

“Arturo?”

“Just threw his hands up in the air, called them all crazy assholes and went to work.”

“Arturo would never…”

“No, but I _know_ it’s what he was thinking, he was muttering under his breath when he left,” Michael says, he pushes himself to his feet and waits for Alex to come around his desk. He’s got his bag over his shoulder and beret in hand, Michael presses a hand to the back of his neck and smiles at him.

“They all agreed on Monday morning though,” he says, “so we’ll tell Sergeant Canvers that I’ll bring you in since we’ll all likely be back here arguing about living situations and who’s going to help her in her recovery.”

“I think she’s going to spend a couple days here recovering before it even becomes an issue,” Alex says. “How’s Noah handling all of it?” Alex asks as Michael uses the hand on the back of his neck to gently guide him towards the door, Alex stops him long enough to turn off the lights and pull the door closed.

“Night, sir, see you tomorrow,” Tulliver calls from behind his desk where it looks like he’s shutting down for the day as well. Alex manages a wave as Michael guides him down his own hallway.

“Noah is holding up really well considering he thought his wife’s girlfriend was dead and now she’s not,” Michael says, he opens the door to his truck and closes it behind him while Alex gets settled.

“The offer of counselors still stands,” Alex says, he digs for his phone. “I should probably remind him of that.”

“Sergeant Canvers reminded everyone that counselors were available twenty-four seven if anyone needed to talk,” he lays his hand across the seat and grins out the front window when Alex laces their fingers together.

It’s a slow drive off base, Michael’s made enough trips in now that he knows to obey all posted speed limit signs and stop completely at every stop sign. His lips twist into a smile as they drive off base and Michael visibly relaxes behind the wheel.

When he stops at a stop light he glances over at Alex, raises his eyebrows and Alex rolls his eyes, unbuckling so he can slide across the seat closer to him, he clips the lap belt closed and then lays his head on Michael’s shoulder, rests his hand on Michael’s leg.

He closes his eyes and lets the hum of the engine and the warmth of Michael’s hand wrapping around his dull the edges of his mind that can’t stop being worried about the ramifications of waking Rosa and beginning the dig into the dark web for General Anders and the possibility of more Antarians that instead of being free have been captive in Project Shepherd facilities.

 

********************************

 

He wakes up alone in bed on Saturday.

He should have expected it; doesn’t mean he has to like it. He rolls over in the bed, so he can bury his face in Michael’s pillow, trying to ignore the fact that he can already hear Isobel and Michael’s low voices in the living room.

It’s barely even light out.

He gets ready slowly, relishing the silence in the bathroom with the door closed and when he comes out fully dressed Michael is waiting in their bedroom with a harried expression on his face but he’s also holding a cup of coffee out to him.

“She’s been here since six,” he says, Alex loops an arm around his neck and tugs him in for a kiss, the hand not holding the coffee cup going to his waist.

“Good morning,” Alex murmurs, Michael kisses him again, lips moving sweetly against his and there’s a moment where Alex thinks, ‘yes I can take my boyfriend to bed and have sex with him in the privacy of our own bedroom while his mom and sister are on the other side of the door’.

Then Isobel taps on the door and pushes it open.

“We could have been naked in here Is,” Michael grumbles.

“You move fast, but you’re not that fast,” Isobel says. “Good morning Alex.”

“Morning, you know my guys would have been happy with like hamburgers and hotdogs and some store-bought pastas, right? I mean we’ve eaten MRE’s and been thankful as hell so…”

Isobel looks positively aghast and Alex just stops talking, taking the cup that Michael had been holding, he’s going to need all the caffeine in the world to deal with this day he thinks.

 

********************************

 

Michael is out at the grill and Canvers, Nasy and McDonald were the first to arrive promptly at noon, so they’re clustered around that general area in lawns chair they brought themselves. They all have beers in hand, except for Nasy who doesn’t drink and is holding a bottle of water instead.

Mara is watching them from a safe distance away with a fond smile on her face and Alex turns away from the window before they catch him watching and start waving for him.

“How are you doing?” Alex asks Isobel, she’s sorting through the pile of stuff on the table that will eventually need to go outside. Paper plates, napkins, cups, utensils.

“I’m fine,” Isobel says, her voice is pitched just a tad too high to be natural and he just looks at her.

“Noah and I argued last night,” she says quietly.

“About Rosa?”

She shrugs, “other stuff too. The Rosa thing was just the thing that I think blew it all up.”

“You can tell me it’s none of my business.”

“Eventually Michael is going to quit dragging his heels and actually marry you, so you’re going to be my brother probably sooner rather than later,” Isobel says, she grins at him.

Alex doesn’t say anything to negate the statement, and he doesn’t think he has any real visible tells, but whatever Isobel can see in his face or eyes just confirms that marriage is something that they might have discussed at some point and her grin widens.

“We’ve been talking about maybe starting a family,” she says finally, quietly. She sits in one of the kitchen chairs, fingers ruffling through the napkins idly. “I just, I mean, what if we… and then the baby isn’t…”

Alex sits down next to her, touches her hand gently.

“I can put you in touch with some of the Antarians we’ve met over the years, several of them have had children with their human partners,” he says softly. “They’re all normal, healthy children… well some of them are adults now,” he amends. “Whatever your fears are, don’t let that be one of them.”

She looks at him, then lunges at him to wrap her arms around him in a hug. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“If you guys have questions like that, or just want to talk you can let me know,” he says. “I might not have all the answers you’re looking for, but I know people who might.”

 

********************************

 

When he comes out on the deck with his hands full his guys are right there to take everything away, then wander into the house to grab whatever else could possibly be needed.

He can already see beers in most hands and he’s sure Canvers has already got this base covered. But he’s the Captain, they’re his problem if it comes to it.

“Who are my DD’s?” he asks, loud enough that he knows they can all hear him. And Barrows, Daniels and Waterstone’s as well as all of Davies’ boys’ hands go up. “Michael make sure they know where the non-alcoholic beverages are?”

Michael salutes him with the spatula in his hand and raises an eyebrow at him. Alex just grins at him and takes the beer that Maria hands him, letting himself be nudged into a seat between her and Perkins.

“You guys have designated drivers?” Maria asks, she loops her arm around Alex’s and leans into his side.

“Oh yeah, ever since that one guy,” she kicks at Barrows’ knee, “what was his name? The idiot?”

“Walliday, Wollingsworth, something with a W,” Barrows says, leaning back in his chair with his soda balanced on one of the arms, she rolls her eyes at him.

“Canvers who was the idiot?” she yells, Canvers looks up from where he has his head bent together with Max and Daniels, that can’t be anything good, Alex makes a mental note to wander over there to find out what they’re discussing.

“Wallingford,” Canvers says then turns back to his conversation.

“That was him, that was the first time I think we ever saw Cap come close to losing his temper,” Perkins says. “Though Cap doesn’t really lose his temper, not like normal people.”

“Guy was a moron,” Barrows mutters. “He got off light.”

“He was your teammate,” Alex reminds him.

“Still doesn’t mean he wasn’t a moron, he went out drinking with a couple of guys from the base when we were in Madrid for a thing, got yanked coming back on base and Captain got called at 0130,” Barrows says.

“We all got woken up at the ass crack of dawn, we get there and Wallingford looks like he’s going to piss himself and Cap’s all calm, has us all in formation and then asks him if he called one of us and he says no and Cap asks why and Wallingford is like, I don’t know any of them,” Perkins snorts.

“He didn’t even try, but Cap he didn’t like that answer, he asks Wallingford if he knew he was going out drinking? And kid was like yeah and he asks who was planned as the DD to bring them back…” Barrows says.

“He was all I went out with a bunch of guys from the dorms, I thought one of them… and Cap asks why didn’t you call one of your squadmates? And Wallingford didn’t say anything, he’s just making sad pitiful eyes looking like he’s going to puke at any second,” Barrows scratches at his chin. “I think he was actually still drunk, but Cap, it’s like right there Wallingford just ceased to exist and he looked at all of us and he said…”

“If I’m trusting you to have each other’s backs in the field I’m trusting you to have each other’s backs when you’re not in the field,” Alex says.

Airman Wallingford hadn’t lasted long after that, the General had moved him off to a different team with no affiliation with Project Orion pretty quickly after that.

“He didn’t even try, thought he was going to come in and do top secret missions as a way of life,” Barrows says.

“We had a month of team building exercises after that,” Perkins groans. “All trust falls and trust climbs and Cap’s version of truth or dare where there’s no dare only truth and no alcohol to speak of to make it any easier.”

“That sounds like fun,” Maria says sarcastically.

“The trust climbs were fun,” Barrows admits. “Trust falls not so much, but that’s mostly because we’re all suspicious assholes on the best of days and Farrell has those little spindly arms and couldn’t catch Perkins if he tried.”

 

********************************

 

Davies and his boys leave at about 1700, taking leftovers with them to feed the four unlucky ones that got to man the building.

Canvers ushers their team to their vehicles at about 1900, he only looks slightly annoyed by the fact that he’s had four beers and that means that Daniels takes the keys out of his hand to drive him and Nasy home.

Mara has gone into the quiet of the cabin, if he were to go inside he knows he’d find her on the couch either reading or watching something on the laptop.

It leaves just their little group around the burn pit that Michael has got going.

Noah has his arm wrapped around Isobel’s shoulder, both of them looking relaxed and happy as they lean into each other.

Maria has got her head resting on Liz’s knee as Liz leans into Kyle, it surprises him just a little bit that when Max comes back out of the cabin that he doesn’t squeeze into place on the other side of Liz, just settles next to Kyle.

He’s curled up on the lawn chair between Michael’s legs, head resting on his shoulder, Michael’s arms warm around him. He could go to sleep like this, light from the fire dancing in his eyes, his friends safe, _Michael_ safe.

“You know what we forgot?” Michael asks softly.

“We can’t possibly have forgotten anything,” Isobel says defensively.

“Marshmallows,” Michael says, Alex turns his head slightly and Michael kisses his cheek.

“I haven’t made s’mores in forever,” Maria murmurs. “But I think if I eat another bite I might actually throw up.”

 

********************************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, you are seeing that correctly... Family Ties will end with chapter 19 (coming next week) and the first chapter of the next story (tentatively titled in my head as Blood Bonds for reasons) will start posting the following week.


	19. Chapter 19

**Family Ties 19/19**

 

Sunday is a lazy day, and he gets to wake with Michael still wrapped around him as the sun is coming up.

The cabin is quiet, just the hum of the fan going.

“It’s early, go back to sleep,” Michael grumbles, he tightens his grip like he thinks Alex is going to flee from the bed.

“Bathroom,” Alex says and Michael mutters something Alex can’t hear under his breath, but he does release his hold so Alex can push the covers back. Michael must have gotten up at some point after Alex went to sleep because his crutches are beside the bed and Alex doesn’t remember putting them there.

He leaves the door open when he goes in and as he’s finishing up washing his hands and trying to decide if he wants to brush his teeth Michael comes in behind him. He presses kisses to the back of his neck and grinds against him.

“We’re not having sex in the bathroom,” Alex murmurs and he turns his head to press a conciliatory kiss to Michael’s jaw.

Michael makes a face and Alex rolls his eyes, pulls out his toothbrush and watches Michael watching him in the mirror.

Michael doesn’t follow him back into their bedroom, but Alex hears the toilet flush as he reclines back, then the water in the sink running and he grins when Michael comes back in.

He stalks the few steps across the room and crawls up the bed right over Alex’s body. Bracketing his head with his arms and hands as they kiss. Alex drags his fingers down Michael’s back, presses his hands against his ass.

“Love you,” he gasps against Michael’s lips when Michael finally slides inside him.

The room is warm, Michael is warm against him, lips capturing every moan and gasp before they can escape. Michael comes swearing his name, Alex wraps a hand around himself and Michael pushes his hand away, wraps his own hand around him it’s almost the wrong side of too much when Alex comes.

“I love you too,” Michael murmurs against his skin as he drags his lips across his neck, bites his ear. When he makes his way back to his lips Alex cups his face in his hands and kisses him sweetly, he can feel Michael’s lips curving into a smile against his and the level of contentment he feels is probably illegal.

 

********************************

 

It’s a late breakfast when they finally get up, Alex likes lazy Sunday’s. Hopefully they’ll go back to lazy Saturday’s as well.

He spent a long time on the prosthetic on Saturday, so he makes a conscious decision to not put it on, he makes his way to the kitchen on crutches where Michael smiles at him approvingly and Alex ignores him while he pours a cup of coffee that Michael plucks out of his hand to sit in front of his spot at the table.

Alex rolls his eyes at him but kisses him when Michael leans in close.

Breakfast is scrambled eggs and bacon that Michael makes just the perfect side of crispy, the smell of food draws Mara out of her room.

“Isobel said you spoke to her yesterday about her and Noah having children?” Mara asks as they settle on the couch after Michael has banished them from the kitchen despite their best efforts to assist him with clean up.

“She had some concerns, I just had answers that would quell those concerns,” Alex shrugs.

“Still, you offered her hope and answers, you didn’t need to,” Mara smiles at him and the smile and the lightness in the features of her face are a far cry from the woman that Alex had first saw in Caulfield. Her hair is growing back, though her sons is still longer, and she looks happy instead of terrified.

Alex thinks that any children Isobel and Noah are thinking about trying for will be shelved until the immediate issue of Rosa’s waking is resolved.

 

********************************

 

Michael drives him into work with a smile even though Alex had to all but drag him out of bed at 0500 with the lure of sexual favors; he ignores the eyes and stays on the passenger side of the vehicle though he does keep his hand linked with Michael’s as they drive onto base.

“Safely delivered,” Michael announces as they walk into his office and find Canvers already standing there.

“I had complete and utter faith,” Canvers says. “Plus trackers, we could totally find him if you tried to abscond with him.”

“I find it mildly disconcerting that you are okay with them having trackers in your uniforms and prosthetic,” Michael says.

“It’s fine, they mostly only use them for good,” Alex says absently, there are post-its littering his desk that were _not_ there when he left on Friday; several from Davies with Sunday’s date, two from Tulliver, one from Sullivan.

“Do we have an ETA on when Liz and Arturo are coming back?” Alex asks, though it’s early, barely past 0630. Liz, Max and Kyle are probably not even awake.

“Ms. Ortecho and I discussed it briefly on Saturday and I think the plan is 0800,” Canvers says, he’s looking at him with an expression that Alex recognizes, and he nods in response.

“Okay, we’ll have time for a brief staff before then, can you get Lieutenant Davies, Barrows and…” he thinks for a minute, “I think it’s still Sergeant Curry as his First?”

“Yeah, I’ll get us set up in the conference room,” Canvers says, he bumps fists with Michael and leaves.

“Do I even want to know?” Michael asks, his tone indicates that he’s expecting Alex to not be able to tell him anything.

“Probably nothing of importance, there would have been calls,” Alex says, “are you going to hang out until the rest of them get here?”

“Yeah, I’ve got my phone and worst case I can text Nasedo to see if he’ll let me come hang out with him,” Michael waves his phone at him. Alex makes a mental note to have Canvers send Nasy to Michael, as a distraction it’ll be a nice one until they figure out what exactly they’re dealing with.

 

********************************

 

“We’ve got the coordinates for what, if god isn’t working to completely screw us over, are the only other two defunct Project Shepherd sites,” Canvers says. The blinds are closed, the door is locked, Canvers’ laptop is connected to the monitor and they can all see the two sites marked on the map.

“They definitely spread them out, think that was a defense mechanism? Keep them far apart so if there was an assault on one facility they still had time to lock down the others?” Davies asks.

“I think we can’t leave anything to chance, including the fact that once Caulfield was compromised that the other two wouldn’t have been cleared out,” Alex says.

“Told you my boys and I would take one of them,” Davies says, he looks over at Curry and the man nods once.

“I’ll put in the reqs and pull them all back, we take the one nearest to us and Captain Fitzpatrick and his team can take the others.”

“What we do if we find any survivors?” Davies asks and Alex breathes, he’s not sure what he’s hoping for. Survivors means there’s still a chance to find Michael’s father, Isobel and Max’s parents. Survivors means more people they’ve failed to protect.

“Survivors come here,” Alex says, they’ve still get a full medical staff for the current group of Antarians. “Any military on site go to wherever the General is dictating them to be held.”

Curry bounces up from his chair, already tapping on his phone as he opens the door, Canvers scrambling to disconnect his laptop from the screen before it opens.

“I like road trips,” Davies says, “but every time we have to do one I have to remind myself every day that they’re good guys and I’m way too pretty to fair well in prison if I kill them because of the road trip singalongs.”

 

********************************

 

Liz and Arturo want it to be only the three of them in the room when they wake Rosa, plus Alex.

“We don’t want to stress her out any more then she’s going to be,” Liz says as they’re walking down the hall side by side, like she needs to explain _why_ she doesn’t want a bunch of people that may have been the last people Rosa saw before she ‘died’ hovering around her.

“I can wait outside or change if you…” Alex offers, and Liz shakes her head. Arturo is already in the room with Rosa and Alex has a doctor on standby for when she’s conscious just in case.

“I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” Liz says, her voice is shaking. He touches her hand and she grips his fingers. “What do we do if she identifies Isobel as the one who…”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Alex says, “but we’ve also got Andy Diaz who was very obviously involved, and he’s all but admitted that he was controlling Isobel’s actions during that time.”

“What kind of psycho,” Liz mutters, Alex stops her in front of the door to where they’re keeping Rosa’s pod. “I’ve been trying to remember, because papa he’s all calm about Isobel and whatever her place in Rosa’s life was, but I don’t remember Rosa ever _saying_ she was, you know…”

“Gay?” Alex knows he has raised eyebrows, and Liz flushes. “Do you remember Roswell back then?”

Liz shakes her head, and Alex isn’t surprised. A lot of his memories of those last couple of months of high school are tinged by grief from losing Michael, losing Rosa, losing all the dreams he’d had.

But Roswell as a whole, back then, was never going to be accepting of an alternative life style.

“Should have brought Maria,” Liz sighs, “they were always such good friends, or had Isobel come but she and Noah are kind of fragile right and I didn’t want to…”

“We’ll focus on getting Rosa awake,” Alex says, “then you let Rosa decide who she wants to see.”

“Okay,” Liz squares her shoulders. “Let’s go wake up my older sister slash younger cousin.”

Alex pushes the door open and Arturo is sitting in the chair right next to the pod, he’s humming something when they walk in, hand resting on the pod.

The door closes behind them, he waits to hear the click of the locks engaging.

Nasy has left the control pad to open the pod and Alex spends the couple of minutes that Liz and Arturo have their heads bent together talking quietly, to hook the pad up and run a last-minute diagnostic.

All Rosa’s vitals are good, strong and he lets out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. When he looks up Liz and Arturo are watching him.

“Are we ready?” he asks, Liz jerks her head once, their hands are clenched tightly together, and Alex presses the release mechanism on the pad.

He’s only seen pods opened a handful of times, most of the survivors they’ve come into contact have been long released from the pods they traveled in. Most of the pods he’s been able to see, and use have been empty and for what Nasy classifies as ‘training purposes’ only.

He knows what to expect, Liz and Arturo don’t and they both take a step back and Liz lets out a startled squeak as the top of the pod folds away.

Rosa’s features are lax in sleep, Nasy’s notes stated that it would take a few minutes after the pod was opened for the air within to dissipate and whatever chemicals that are built into the pod to promote sleep and healing would clear away.

Liz and Arturo move closer, Arturo reaching out to cup Rosa’s cheek in a hand that Alex can see is trembling.

Rosa’s face twitches, her lips part on a breath and she takes a sudden gasping breath, eyes opening wide and startled.

“Rosa,” Arturo says softly, and Liz is crying, one hand over her mouth, the other reaching out to touch Rosa’s hair.

Rosa’s eyes are moving frantically around the room, taking in her surroundings, clocking the gray in Arturo’s hair, the age in Liz’s features and Alex knows she’s cataloguing everything around her and understanding none of it.

She sees him, she sees the uniform and he doesn’t know if it’s because it’s a _uniform_ or for some other reason. She scrambles within the pod to stand and would have hit the ground hard if not for Arturo and Liz. They both have arms wrapped around her, Rosa hanging limp between them, staring at him.

“Isobel,” she says, eyes wide and panicked; voice gravely in its unuse. “You have to help Isobel.”

 

********************************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So thoughts on if survivors should be found at one of the new Project Shepherd sites. I'm still largely undecided at the moment.


End file.
